Metaverse Head-to-Head

Round One Winner? - Meta

How does Microsoft lose the metaverse?

Microsoft just paid Accenture to buy $20M worth of Oculus Quest 2 Headsets from Facebook to help launch Microsoft Mesh for Teams. This is not how competitive industry cash flow is supposed to look.

This is also a case study on what not to do on so many different levels.

One could argue that building your software on your competitor’s hardware is a demonstration of how the metaverse will work, but building a case study using your largest strategic partner (Accenture) on your competitor’s hardware?

This graphic timeline helps tell the comical side of the story:?

Problem #1 - Facebook has a competitive product

Facebook has access to so much data… so building a better, faster, and more streamlined product on hardware they own is 10x easier when the largest competitor loads thousands of users onto your platform and puts their app on your ecosystem.?

Problem #2 - Facebook authorizes the apps that run on Oculus

How did Zuckerberg know how to beat Microsoft launch dates by just a few days? Facebook knew exactly what Microsoft was launching and when it was launching. Not only did they see user activity, they saw developer activity. Install rates. Version changes. Session errors.?This is exactly how a multi-million dollar product launch with billions in revenue at stake is completely undermined from the start.

Problem #3 - Facebook/Meta/Oculus knows who your users are.?

Every app on Oculus has a detailed set of usage information available for them to analyze. Typically they know more about these employees/users than the employer does from all the parallel Facebook profile data (whether that is Accenture, Microsoft, or anyone else using Microsoft Teams via Oculus.) This data provides untold value for product competitive product development.

Problem #4 - Facebook owns the largest global ad network

Since it knows who is using Microsoft Mesh for Teams, it has terms of service that directly state it can offer up other solutions and advertisements using your customer list. Every single customer acquired by Microsoft Teams that use an Oculus is signing up for competitive advertising (and then some.) Once they design a functional alternative they can sell it (or give it away for free) to anyone on the list you provided.

Problem #5 - Accenture is using it as a case study

Accenture (one of Microsoft’s largest channel partners) is actively using this case study to sell more ‘hybrid work’ projects. As Accenture convinces new corporate clients on the concepts of hybrid work the ‘leakage’ problem (untold number of users) is only going to get worse, not better.?

THE ENDGAME - YOUR DATA

The end result of this head-to-head is going to be who has access to your data. In this current scenario, both organizations do. The profile, your profile- will be the commodity on which a transactional and subscription revenue stream will be defined by who has access to the 'app' marketplaces in each ecosystem (I.E. who has access to the user.)

Who do you think will come out ahead?

Meta has a severe advantage over Microsoft in the fact that it has the cheapest hardware that has millions of users on it and is paired with the largest social and advertising database. Microsoft has more business accounts on Teams and has Linkedin for B2B coverage, but will the hardware dependency be something they can overcome?

#meta #microsoft #facebook #accenture #mixedreality #metaverse #pii