Dear Mark,

Congratulations on rebranding Facebook to “Meta”. I’ve had a close look at your announcement and it is clear that you are going strong into building “The Metaverse”.

Welcome to the club!

You are clearly the biggest player in this field, but definitely not the first. Actually, it is even becoming a very crowded space. Metaverse this, metaverse that… “Metaverse” is becoming the next “blockchain”, a magical buzzword that will automatically grant you the attention of numerous investors all around the world. And many companies are already claiming to be building “The Metaverse”, whether they are huge game companies like Epic, or smaller startups, like Gather or Branch.

Oh, but I realize I haven’t introduced myself yet! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m David, CTO of WorkAdventure, a brand new video-chat platform in a virtual universe whose purpose is to make online interactions more human.

So yeah, most of my day, I’m building a parallel universe where people can interact, work together, socialize, and in general, be more efficient together, especially if they are working remotely.

It is very different from Facebook’s metaverse though. We are not betting heavily on VR headsets, but on low tech (retro 2D game engines) that will be available to anyone. Yet, we all have this in common: we want to build virtual places where people can meet and interact more naturally than in a Zoom meeting.

So, what does it take to build a metaverse?

Well, first of all, you need a virtual universe and people interacting in this universe with their avatars. But this is of course not enough. Otherwise, any multiplayer game like “World Of Warcraft” would be a metaverse.

Next, you need the ability for your users to build their own spaces (you can call them virtual rooms) where they can meet. In a metaverse, content is provided by your users. But this is not enough yet! Otherwise, Minecraft or the Sims would be a metaverse.