Browsing by Subject "xr"

In recent years, the concept of Metaverse has become a popular buzzword in the media and different communities. In 2021, the company behind Facebook rebranded itself into Meta Platforms, inc. in order to match their new vision of developing the Metaverse. The Metaverse is becoming reality as intersecting technologies, including head-mounted virtual reality displays (HMDs) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have been developed. Different communities, such as media, researchers, consumers and companies have different perspectives on the Metaverse and its opportunities and problems. Metaverse technology has been researched thoroughly, while little to none research has been done on gray literature, i.e. non-scientific sources, to gain insight on the ongoing hype. The conducted research analyzed 44 sources in total, ranging from news articles to videos and forum discussions. The results show that people are seeing opportunities in Metaverse entrepreneurship in the changing career landscape. However, the visions of Meta Platforms, inc. also receive a fair amount of critique in the analyzed articles and threads. The results suggest that most of the consumers are only interested in a smaller subset of features than what is being marketed. The conducted research gives insight on how different sources are seeing the Metaverse and can therefore be used as a starting point for more comprehensive gray literature studies on the Metaverse. While making innovations to the underlying technology is important, studying people’s viewpoints is a requirement for the academia to understand the phenomenon and for the industry to produce a compelling product.