Online dating apps, a crypto exchange and a pro wrestling brand are among many companies that have attempted to incorporate their disparate and seemingly unrelated businesses into the metaverse discussion this quarter.

The concept was at the heart of analysts’ concerns after Facebook changed its company name to Meta last month to “an Internet personified where you are in the experience, not just by looking at it.” as defined by the general manager Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg is betting that the Metaverse, a computer-generated world, is where people go to work, play and socialize using the company’s virtual reality headsets.

But leaders around the world have many divergent opinions on what the Metaverse is and when to expect it. Some see the metaverse as something that already exists, like the worlds created by Roblox. Others see it as a vague futuristic concept.

When asked about their plans for the Metaverse after profits this week, the executive’s responses were everything. And nothing. Most have not shied away from thinking about cutting edge business opportunities that could increase the value of stocks. It is not known whether or not they will materialize – or if the ideas even make sense.

“All I can do is sit back and stare at him in amazement,” Neal Stephenson, who popularized the term in his 1992 book. book “Snow Crash,” CNBC said in a recent interview.

Here is what we “learned”.

Roblox CEO David Baszucki: “It’s called the metaverse today. We called it the human co-experience,” Baszucki defines the metaverse as a place where technology combines high-fidelity communication with a new way of telling stories, borrowing from the game. mobile and the entertainment industry.

“This new category of metaverse or co-experience is built on eight core principles,” said Baszucki: identity, social, immersive, low friction, variety, anywhere, economy and civility.

Warner Music Group CEO Stephen Cooper: “I think in these large-scale metavers, Fortnite, Roblox, and the like, we’ll start to see an opportunity where content delivery and distribution converge. And when you start to look at the global reach, the number of people who spend a lot of time in these new worlds, I think that provides a universe of opportunity for Warner. “

Vonage Fund (cloud communications) CEO Rory Read: “I think it’s the next 5, 7, 10 years.”

bilibili (Chinese video sharing site) CEO Rui Chen: “The metaverse is a concept, it is not a product. And before this concept emerged, many elements associated with the metaverse already existed. Whether it was virtual reality, a narrow social community or a social system or a self-strengthening ecosystem, this already existed, and many companies are already developing products on these concepts, for example Facebook and Tencent, and in fact, Bilibili is one of them.

That’s why I think if someone hears the concept of metaverse and decides to go for this business, it would probably be a little too late. It’s because those things like the social system, the self-strengthening ecosystem, which can’t all be achieved in a few months or even a few years. “

Tencent President Chi Ping Lau: “On the metaverse, I think it’s actually a very exciting concept, but a little vague.”

Dolby Laboratories CEO Kevin Yeaman: “I think the metaverse, I guess, can take many forms, but ultimately it’s an audiovisual experience.”

chinese game maker NetEase Head of Investor Relations Margaret Shi: “The metaverse is indeed the new buzzword everywhere today. But on the other hand, I don’t think anyone has really had the first-hand experience of what it is. But at NetEase , we are technologically ready. We know how to accumulate the relevant knowledge – how, the relevant skills when that day comes. So, I think when that day finally comes, we would probably be one of the fastest runners in space. metaverse. “

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong: “I think with the tens of millions of Americans who are now using this asset class for all kinds of things, not just financial services and one-off payments and things like that, but also art and new forms of governance and identity and the Metaverse. And it’s so exciting that millions of young, talented young people all over the United States are coming into this field. “

Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbrowizards of the coast: “The first step to participating in the metaverse, you have to have digital games. I think the metaverse is a shortcut for, hey, entertainment is digitization and entertainment is the game of life.”

buzz (dating company) president Tariq M. Shaukat: “On the metaverse, we’re really taking the Web3 goal on this particular point, which means we’re … I’m sure someone is going to build a more virtual experience and we’ll be happy to engage and d ‘being there when they do it with avatars etc. But what we really think is really interesting in the short term is the application of blockchain and crypto in general to the experience of our communities. we’re not just an ecosystem, but we’re a community of people. That’s true on Bumble and Badoo, but it’s especially true when we think about kind of reinventing Bumble BFF. “

“And the opportunities to really engage our members and really see them as members who participate in this community are really, we think, really super exciting. And so we keep experimenting. We have a few tests that we’re very excited about. of what we’re going to roll out in the coming months on this, but we think that’s the first step. It’s something that’s going to evolve. We want to make sure that we put the technique and the engineering in place. foundation of all that emerges in the metaverse and in the world of Web3.

Ryan Steelberg, Veritone (AI software) co-founder: “A simple example is now to imagine just one of our big media partners like ESPN or CBS News, having all of its content, in fact, ready for seamless integration with the metaverse, right, where that content is all offline. along one of the more traditional means of distribution such as OTT or linear television. “

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon: “If you were to spend time in the Metaverse, Snapdragon will be your ticket to the Metaverse.” (Facebook’s Oculus headsets currently run on Qualcomm chips.)

Veritone CEO Chad Steelberg: “I think the metaverse, by definition, is a lot bigger than the new company Meta aka Facebook. By definition, it’s a multiverse, that’s going to move content and information both into the digital realm, and then, obviously, the digital realm interfacing with us in our physical selves. “

Unity First Vice-President Marc Whitten: “Whatever the word metaverse means, it will be built by millions of content creators, and we’re on a mission to give them the easy-to-use, powerful tools that will bring their visions to life.”

Roblox Product manager Manuel Bronstein: “At Roblox, we want to connect over a billion people in the metaverse.”

Roblox Chief Business Officer Craig Donato: “We expect ad agencies to have the ability to create metaverse experiences. “

Disney CEO Bob Chapek: “Suffice it to say, our efforts to date are just a prologue to a time when we can connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, enabling borderless storytelling in our own Disney metaverse.”

Match group (dating companies) CEO Sharmistha Dubey: “There is, for example, a piano bar where people gather digitally, but they actually play their piano at home and play with others. You can overhear a conversation, join conversations, you can tap into digital avatars to see more of their profiles, and you basically have a richer set of signals to help you connect with someone. These are metaverse experiences that come to life in a way that transforms the way people meet and get to know each other on a dating or social discovery platform and is much more like the way people do. interact in the real world. “

Unity CEO John Riccitiello on Unity’s game for the metaverse through its acquisition of Weta Digital: “It’s really going to help us extract and build the metaverse around the idea that the world is a better place with more creators. And now the millions of creators around the world who think of themselves as artists are welcome to our platform and we have something to keep them going. So that really puts something under our platform that is, at least from an artist’s point of view, really magical and they are the biggest exploitable audience that we have in our universe. “

Question from Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham: “Okay, great. And then my other is that you mentioned NFT a few times. So that’s it – could you rate that for us and more generally, how do you feel about that, the role? , the metaverse and entering the digital online world, and can you kind of think NFTs is going to be – is the meta actually going to be a bigger deal, like going live, you really work in the real world, the physical world, but how do you feel about the metaverse? And in that context, how big do you think the NFTs could be as part of the new metaverse? “

Global wrestling entertainment Director of Revenue Nick Khan: “We think he’s tough now. We think he’s going to continue to evolve and maybe become even more robust, and we think he’s here to stay.”

Martin: “Ok thank you.”

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