Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of turning the social networking company Facebook into a virtual universe could come to an abrupt end, if he can’t get people excited again with this new term. According to Cointelegraph, data from search results trends shows that interest in the metaverse has plummeted since the start of this year.
The Metaverse is known as a space where the physical and digital worlds come together. It’s where each person’s avatar interacts in virtual space like in real life.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Zuckerberg turned the world’s attention to the term metaverse when he decided to shift focus from social networking apps to a whole new world where people can not only communicate but also work and play. He also changed Facebook’s name to Meta to show his determination.
The big change of a technology “giant” is enough to attract everyone’s excitement. In fact, according to statistics from Google Trends, in the first half of 2021, the public’s interest in the metaverse was quite low, but increased sharply when Zuckerberg announced his ambitions for the virtual universe. Surprisingly, interest came from outside the US, with Turkey leading the way, followed by China and Singapore.
The US ranks only 9th in search trends analyzed by Google, behind the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and slightly ahead of Nigeria.
This is quite worrying for Meta, which has not only poured tens of billions of dollars into the metaverse over the past two quarters, but has also opened the virtual world to customers in the US and Canada. Even as the investment potential of the metaverse continues to grow, interest is slowly cooling.
In just a short time after Meta’s announcement, interest in virtual universes has dropped dramatically. While some would argue that this is the effect of a news spiral, the downward trend is not only happening globally but also in the US, where many businesses continue to announce plans to enter the metaverse.
When looking at Google Trends data in the US, it can be seen that interest is only 1/5 of the peak in 2021, reinforcing the fact that Americans view the metaverse as an exaggeration.
This also affects non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In fact, NFT overtook cryptocurrencies in global searches last year, while OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, hit an all-time high trading volume earlier this year. From then on, interest in the NFT also dropped, to less than a third of its peak.
According to Interesting Engineering