There's been a lot of snark about what exactly the metaverse is.

關於 "元宇宙"（metaverse）到底是什麼，人們一直在冷嘲熱諷。

The metaverse, a byproduct of covid isolation, mass produced virtual reality headsets in the burgeoning Web3 space.

元宇宙（metaverse）是科維德人與世隔絕的副產品，在新興的 Web3 空間大量生產虛擬現實頭盔。

If we think back a couple of years, we have huge companies investing in metaverse divisions and hiring chief metaverse officers and whole strategies around this.

回想幾年前，許多大公司都在投資元宇宙部門，聘請首席元宇宙官，並圍繞元宇宙制定整體戰略。

Banks started opening branches in the metaverse.

銀行開始在元宇宙開設分行。

Celebrities made headlines buying property in the metaverse.

名人在 metaverse 購買房產成為頭條新聞。

ETFs around the metaverse trade started popping up.

圍繞元宇宙交易的 ETF 開始湧現。

We were all still sort of under pandemic lockdown.

我們都還處於大流行病的封鎖狀態。

So there was over exuberance in metaverse because people were looking to socialize and it wasn't that easy to do in real life.

是以，元宇宙出現了過度繁榮的現象，因為人們希望社交，而這在現實生活中並不容易做到。

At the peak of the metaverse hype cycle, Citibank estimated the space could hit $13 trillion in valuation by 2030.

在元宇宙炒作週期的高峰期，花旗銀行估計，到 2030 年，該領域的估值將達到 13 萬億美元。

Microsoft threw its hat in the metaverse ring.

微軟也加入了 "元宇宙 "的行列。

Even Web3 and crypto projects capitalized on the trend with decentralized metaverses like Decentraland and Sandbox.

甚至 Web3 和加密項目也順應潮流，推出了 Decentraland 和 Sandbox 等去中心化元服務器。

People would take this sort of idea of a digital asset, apply that to the 3D virtual worlds and huzzah, you've got the metaverse.

人們將這種數字資產的理念應用到三維虛擬世界中，然後就有了元宇宙。

But when it comes to the metaverse, no one stakes their claim on the space more than Facebook.

但是，說到元宇宙，沒有人比 Facebook 更有發言權了。

Facebook is announcing its name change officially, now changing its corporate name to Meta.

Facebook 正式宣佈更名，將公司名稱改為 Meta。

The next platform and medium will be even more immersive, an embodied Internet where you're in the experience, not just looking at it.

下一個平臺和媒介將更加身臨其境，這是一個身臨其境的互聯網，你將身臨其境，而不僅僅是觀看。

In October of 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg placed his trillion dollar social media company at the forefront of the metaverse conversation, investing heavily in its reality lab segment, kicking off the entire Wall Street hype cycle.

2021 年 10 月，Facebook 首席執行官馬克-扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）將其價值萬億美元的社交媒體公司置於元宇宙話題的最前沿，對其現實實驗室部門進行了大量投資，拉開了整個華爾街炒作週期的序幕。

There was genuinely a need and a desire at the time for Facebook, the company, to rebrand into something else.

當時，Facebook 公司確實需要並希望重塑品牌形象。

Metaverse was Facebook's answer to an increasingly online population, with Zuckerberg estimating a billion users by the end of the decade.

扎克伯格預計，到本世紀末，Facebook 的用戶數量將達到 10 億。

So that leads us to ask, where is everybody?

是以，我們不禁要問，人都去哪兒了？

If you build it, they will come.

如果你建造了它，他們就會來。

I think we're all still waiting to see if people will come.

我想我們都還在等著看大家會不會來。

To understand the metaverse and Meta's role in space, first we have to figure out what exactly it is.

要了解元宇宙和 Meta 在太空中的作用，我們首先要弄清楚它到底是什麼。

The metaverse cannot be defined.

元宇宙無法定義。

Kind of like a virtual digital world universe, if you will, in which people can essentially have like their Internet counterpart, essentially like an avatar of yourself, live inside this virtual world.

如果你願意的話，這有點像一個虛擬數字世界，人們可以在這個虛擬世界中生活，就像他們在互聯網上的對手一樣，就像你自己的化身一樣。

An open-ended, interconnected world with user-driven content and the potential for the users to cross into other platforms.

一個開放式的互聯世界，內容由用戶驅動，用戶有可能跨入其他平臺。

Trying to define what a metaverse or the metaverse is, was kind of one of the biggest issues that actually surrounded the metaverse overall as concept, because it was never really universally agreed upon.

試圖定義什麼是元宇宙或元宇宙是圍繞元宇宙整體概念的最大問題之一，因為它從來沒有真正得到普遍認同。

While it's difficult to nail down an exact definition of a metaverse, the term predates meta and virtual reality headsets.

雖然很難給元宇宙下一個確切的定義，但這個詞在元和虛擬現實頭盔出現之前就有了。

Online platforms like Second Life came about in the 2000s and are considered early examples of metaverses, virtual spaces where players could assume digital identities and interact with other players from around the globe.

像 "第二人生"（Second Life）這樣的在線平臺出現於 2000 年代，被認為是 "元世界"（metaverses）的早期範例。"元世界 "是一個虛擬空間，玩家可以在其中扮演數字身份，並與全球各地的其他玩家互動。

Originating primarily from the video game space, more recent examples of metaverses include multiplayer games like Fortnite and Roblox.

元祖主要起源於視頻遊戲領域，最近的例子包括《堡壘之夜》和《Roblox》等多人遊戲。

Even Blizzard's World of Warcraft could be defined as a metaverse.

就連暴雪公司的《魔獸世界》也可以被定義為元宇宙。

You have Fortnite and Roblox, which are like 2D versions of a metaverse where they are these kind of immersive open world platforms.

堡壘之夜》（Fortnite）和《Roblox》（Roblox）就像是 2D 版本的元宇宙，是一種身臨其境的開放世界平臺。

So if metaverses already existed, why did the term gain popularity in 2021?

那麼，如果 "元verses "早已存在，為什麼這個詞會在 2021 年流行起來？

Well, a lot of it has to do with the advancement of virtual reality.

這在很大程度上與虛擬現實技術的發展有關。

If you're talking to a CTO of a big Fortune 500 company and trying to say what technology trends you need to be up to date with, at that time, VR, the metaverse, kind of checked all of those boxes.

如果你正在與一家財富 500 強大公司的首席技術官交談，並試圖告訴他你需要了解哪些技術趨勢，那麼在當時，VR、元宇宙（metaverse）可以滿足所有這些要求。

There was a bit of a sense in 2020 and into 2021 that this was a technology that was ready, that it was finally going to hit the big time.

在 2020 年和 2021 年，有一種感覺是，這項技術已經準備就緒，終於要大顯身手了。

Because, I mean, we've had a lot of false stones in virtual reality in the past.

因為，我的意思是，過去我們在虛擬現實中遇到過很多 "假石頭"。

There have been many times when people said, oh, this technology is only a year or two away from being the next big thing.

人們曾多次說，哦，這項技術只需一兩年就能成為下一個大事件。

And that is where Reality Labs played a huge role for meta.

而這正是 Reality Labs 發揮巨大作用的地方。

Created in 2014 after its acquisition of VR startup Oculus, Meta started ramping up investment in Reality Labs over the past five years.

Meta 於 2014 年收購 VR 初創公司 Oculus 後成立，在過去五年中開始加大對 Reality Labs 的投資。

In December of 2021, two months after changing its name, Meta officially launched its online multiplayer virtual reality game, Horizon Worlds.

2021 年 12 月，在更名兩個月後，Meta 正式推出了在線多人虛擬現實遊戲《地平線世界》。

You know, by the end of the decade, we hope to basically get to around a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars of commerce each.

你知道，到本十年末，我們希望元宇宙中的人數能達到十億左右，每個人都能從事數百美元的商業活動。

A goal that is looking less and less achievable.

這個目標看起來越來越難以實現。

I think of the big moment as when the pictures came out of Mark Zuckerberg's avatar in Horizon Worlds a couple of years ago.

我認為最重要的時刻是幾年前馬克-扎克伯格在《地平線世界》中的頭像照片曝光的時候。

And it's this incredibly low quality avatar.

而且頭像品質低得令人難以置信。

And people are like, this is what we're supposed to be getting excited about.

人們會想，這才是我們應該興奮的。

This is what you're saying is the future.

這就是你所說的未來。

Well, who would want to go into this space?

那麼，誰會想進入這個空間呢？

The problem with meta versus people assumed that they would be developed instantaneously.

元對立的問題在於，人們以為元會立即得到發展。

And even Facebook meta trying to do it in an environment where they're a publicly traded company and have to show success on a platform that's been too fast for a company as well funded as meta was.

甚至 Facebook meta 也試圖在這樣一種環境中實現這一目標：他們是一家上市公司，必須在一個平臺上取得成功，而這個平臺對於一家像 meta 一樣資金雄厚的公司來說速度太快了。

Now, three years after changing its name, Meta's metaverse has largely fallen out of the tech conversation.

如今，在更名三年後，Meta 的 metaverse 在很大程度上已經淡出了科技話題。

Google searches for the term metaverse are near flat just three years after hitting a peak in October of 2021.

谷歌對 "元宇宙"（metaverse）一詞的搜索量在 2021 年 10 月達到峰值後，僅用了三年時間就接近持平。

Undoubtedly, the last couple of years, we've seen the metaverse hugely drop away in popularity.

毫無疑問，在過去的幾年裡，我們看到元宇宙的受歡迎程度大幅下降。

Now Reality Labs faces an eye-watering $58 billion in operating losses since 2020.

現在，現實實驗室面臨著自 2020 年以來令人瞠目的 580 億美元的營運虧損。

An insider reports from 2022 revealed Horizon Worlds was averaging around 200,000 monthly active users in its first year, less than half of Meta's original goal of 500,000.

2022 年的一份內部報告顯示，《地平線世界》第一年的平均月活躍用戶數約為 20 萬，不到 Meta 最初目標 50 萬的一半。

If it didn't do this, and it decided just to be a social company, which it absolutely could have done, you know, it would have saved it billions of dollars in terms of what it spent on Reality Labs.

如果它不這樣做，而是決定只做一家社交公司，它完全可以這樣做，你知道，這將為它節省數十億美元的 "現實實驗室 "費用。

So what happened?

到底發生了什麼？

Why didn't people flock to the metaverse?

人們為什麼不湧向元宇宙？

Well, there's been a lot of finger pointing, but most arguments come back to the same conclusion.

雖然大家都在指指點點，但大多數爭論的結論都是一樣的。

No one's really figured out a solid use case for the broad adoption of a metaverse.

目前還沒有人真正想出元宇宙廣泛應用的可靠案例。

The audience wasn't necessarily there at the time.

當時觀眾不一定在現場。

And so hence, I think you see that sort of pullback away from it.

是以，我認為你會看到這種回調。

Medic pitched the metaverse as a place to both work and play.

Medic將元宇宙作為一個既能工作又能娛樂的地方。

Companies could host a virtual meeting.

公司可以舉辦虛擬會議。

You could socialize with friends and play games in Horizon Worlds.

您可以在地平線世界中與朋友社交和玩遊戲。

Shopping and e-commerce were also part of that early vision.

購物和電子商務也是早期願景的一部分。

They're promised all these amazing experiences like Ready Player One, you know, that it could be a wider difference than what we're actually seeing when we get in the device.

他們承諾過所有這些令人驚歎的體驗，比如《Ready Player One》，你知道，這可能會比我們在設備中實際看到的差異更大。

To put it simply, people really didn't care.

簡單地說，人們真的不在乎。

Video game players had their own metaverses already, and the metaverse hype cycle ended up being, well, a lot of hype.

電子遊戲玩家們已經有了自己的元宇宙，而元宇宙的炒作週期最終也只是，嗯，大量的炒作。

And it wasn't just meta who felt the metaverse bubble pop.

感受到元宇宙保麗龍破裂的不僅僅是元。

Web3 metaverses like Decentraland and Sandbox saw trading activity fall significantly on their site after 2022.

2022 年後，Decentraland 和 Sandbox 等 Web3 metaverses 網站上的交易活動大幅減少。

Sandbox's unique active wallets, a way to measure daily active users on the platform, fell below 100 in early 2024.

2024 年初，沙盒的唯一活躍錢包（一種衡量平臺每日活躍用戶的方法）跌破了 100。

Meaning less than 100 people were active on the platform day to day. 98 percent of those projects are totally dead today.

這意味著每天只有不到 100 人活躍在平臺上。如今，這些項目中的 98% 都已徹底消亡。

The other 2 percent of them have lost, you know, 95 percent of their market cap since the highs of 2021.

另外 2% 的公司自 2021 年的高點以來，市值損失了 95%。

And Wall Street's been pulling back, too, with several metaverse ETFs closing up shop over the past two years.

華爾街也一直在後退，過去兩年裡，有幾家元數據 ETF 倒閉了。

We continue to hope that somebody is going to figure out the killer use case for VR, and even Apple has struggled to do so.

我們一直希望有人能找出 VR 的殺手級用例，但即使是蘋果公司也一直在努力尋找。

I don't think metaverse anytime soon, using hardware that's readily available now, is going to be happening.

我不認為元宇宙會在短期內出現，而且使用的硬件現在也很容易買到。

So why keep investing in something that is an obvious cash burn?

那麼，為什麼還要繼續投資那些明顯燒錢的項目呢？

Well, when it comes to meta's metaverse, this isn't the metaverse.

說到元宇宙，這裡可不是元宇宙。

This is the metaverse, or at least it's a piece of it.

這裡是元宇宙，或者至少是元宇宙的一部分。

The metaverse, it's this broad thing, it's not just virtual and augmented reality, although those are going to be some of the new major computing platforms.

元宇宙是一個廣義的概念，它不僅僅是虛擬現實和增強現實，儘管它們將成為一些新的主要計算平臺。

When it comes to defining its own metaverse, MetaSense Horizon Worlds isn't the entire metaverse.

說到定義自己的元宇宙，MetaSense Horizon Worlds 並不是整個元宇宙。

It's only part of the larger interconnected metaverse ecosystem.

它只是更大的互聯元宇宙生態系統的一部分。

That includes a software like Horizon Worlds and the Horizon operating system, as well as wearables like Oculus VR headsets and Meta's newest edition.

這包括《地平線世界》和地平線作業系統等軟件，以及 Oculus VR 頭盔和 Meta 最新版等可穿戴設備。

It's a Ryanair glasses.

這是瑞安航空公司的眼鏡。

We've been investing for this for a long time just because we are asking the question sort of what comes after the smartphone.

我們已經為此投資了很長時間，因為我們一直在問這樣一個問題：智能手機之後是什麼？

It's what many consider to be Meta's endgame, a foothold in the hardware space, a space that has previously eluded them.

許多人認為這是 Meta 的終極目標，即在硬件領域佔據一席之地，而這一領域此前一直是他們無法涉足的。

So it's playing a long game with the hope that it pays off and the hope being it gives Meta that platform, the computing platform that they crave, a place where they can set the rules.

是以，這是一個長期的遊戲，希望它能帶來回報，希望它能給 Meta 提供一個平臺，一個他們渴望的計算平臺，一個他們可以制定規則的地方。

They don't have to abide by the rules of gatekeepers like Apple or Google.

他們不必遵守蘋果或谷歌等守門人的規則。

They get to have their own walls, their own building and have their own developer ecosystem within this new computing paradigm.

在這種新的計算模式下，他們可以擁有自己的圍牆、自己的大樓和自己的開發者生態系統。

Meta's Oculus headsets are the top selling virtual reality headsets in the world, capturing 60 percent of the VR headset marketplace.

Meta 的 Oculus 頭顯是全球最暢銷的虛擬現實頭顯，佔據了虛擬現實頭顯市場 60% 的份額。

Still, that's holding space in a seemingly declining market as U.S. companies responded the year prior.

儘管如此，隨著美國公司在前一年做出迴應，在看似不斷下滑的市場中，這仍然保持著一定的空間。

Meta did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Meta 沒有迴應 CNBC 的置評請求。

Not very many companies have the luxury of having, you know, an enormous amount of cash and having an incredibly powerful advertising business that provides them with a constant stream of money to be doing this, these investments.

並不是很多公司都能奢望擁有鉅額現金和強大的廣告業務，為他們提供源源不斷的資金來進行這些投資。

I meet people every day who think Mark Zuckerberg invented VR, which is just a crazy notion.

我每天都會遇到一些人，他們認為馬克-扎克伯格發明了 VR，這簡直是一種瘋狂的想法。

It is through this that Meta can get its own hardware into people's heads, cutting out the middlemen of Apple and Google.

正是通過這種方式，Meta 可以讓自己的硬件進入人們的大腦，省去蘋果和谷歌的中間環節。

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg sat down with the hosts of Acquired to discuss this exact topic, saying Meta controlling its destiny is strategically valuable.

今年早些時候，馬克-扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）與《收購》（Acquired）的主持人坐在一起討論了這個話題，他說 Meta 掌握自己的命運具有戰略價值。

I think we might be like twice as profitable if we own the platform or something.

我想，如果我們擁有這個平臺，利潤可能會翻倍。

So I think from that perspective, that's worth a lot, just from like a pure like dollars perspective, which is not primarily how I come at this stuff.

是以，我認為從這個角度來看，這很有價值，只是從純粹的美元角度來看，我主要不是這樣看待這個問題的。

What Meta did was try to become the company that was building the hard part of the Metaverse, which was figuring out the hardware.

Meta 所做的，就是試圖成為一家公司，來構建 Metaverse 的困難部分，也就是弄清硬件。

It's expensive, losing a lot of money doing it, but it's a bet that they're willing to take.

這樣做成本很高，會損失很多錢，但這是他們願意下的賭注。

And controlling the hardware and software ecosystem also means access to two extremely profitable spaces that Meta is intimately familiar with, user data and advertising.

控制了硬件和軟件生態系統，也就意味著獲得了 Meta 非常熟悉的兩個利潤極高的領域：用戶數據和廣告。

In-game advertising has grown by about 10% a year over the last several years, and it's about $140 billion industry today.

在過去幾年中，遊戲內廣告每年增長約 10%，如今已成為價值約 1400 億美元的產業。

Meta's ad ambitions are much more grand than just saying, here's a new helmet to put on your character and dress up your avatar with, where Fortnite and Roblox are more kind of on that tier, where Meta is trying to do what they're doing with Facebook advertising, and they're trying to run the ecosystem.

Meta 的廣告野心遠比 "這是一個新頭盔，可以給你的角色戴上，裝扮你的頭像 "要宏大得多，《堡壘之夜》和《Roblox》就屬於這一類。

All goes according to plan, you would have a big online economy going through these Metaverses, future Metaverses, both the physical with AR to the virtual world and, you know, full 3D VR.

如果一切按計劃進行，你將通過這些 Metaverses（未來的 Metaverses）擁有一個龐大的在線經濟，包括從 AR 到虛擬世界的實體經濟，以及全 3D VR。

That's where augmented reality comes into play, an arena big tech is investing heavily in.

這就是增強現實技術發揮作用的地方，也是大型科技公司正在大力投資的領域。

Again, here's Mark Zuckerberg speaking with the Acquired podcast on his vision for AR.

下面是馬克-扎克伯格在《Acquired》播客中談及他對 AR 的願景。

Everyone had a phone before, replaced it with a smartphone, and then a lot of more people got smartphones.

以前每個人都有一部手機，後來換成了智能手機，再後來又有很多人買了智能手機。

If all we get is all the people in the world who already have glasses upgrading to glasses that have AI in them, then like, this is already going to be one of the most successful products in the history of the world.

如果我們能讓世界上所有已經擁有眼鏡的人都升級到擁有人工智能的眼鏡，那麼，這將會成為世界歷史上最成功的產品之一。

So, and I think it's going to go a lot further than that.

所以，我認為它還會走得更遠。

Traditionally, we've thought about the Metaverse, or a lot of people thought about the Metaverse as specifically a 3D world and virtual reality.

傳統上，我們認為 "元宇宙"（Metaverse），或者說很多人認為 "元宇宙"（Metaverse）就是三維世界和虛擬現實。

But, you know, Meta has really made it a point to be, oh, AR, augmented reality blended into the physical world is a really important play.

但是，你知道，Meta 已經真正做到了，哦，AR，將增強現實技術融入物理世界是一個非常重要的玩法。

That's an incredibly powerful thing.

這是一件無比強大的事情。

If Meta is able to catch that position as a platform player for the next generation of computing, which is, I think, the real ambition here, that puts it in a totally different position to where it's been functioning so far.

如果 Meta 能夠成為下一代計算平臺的參與者，我認為這才是它真正的雄心所在，這將使它的地位與迄今為止完全不同。

So maybe we haven't seen the end of Meta's Metaverse ambitions.

是以，也許我們還沒有看到 Meta's Metaverse 野心的終結。

Maybe the Metaverse didn't go anywhere.

也許 Metaverse 哪兒也沒去。

It could just be another decade before we see the ultimate plans of reality labs come to fruition.

可能再過十年，我們就能看到現實實驗室的最終計劃實現了。

It's absolutely been, it's been easy to tease Meta and to kind of, you know, point the finger and maybe critique the investments.

這絕對是，這很容易讓人嘲笑 Meta，你知道，指指點點，也許責備投資。

And that's been a challenge for the company.

這對公司來說是一個挑戰。

But I really, I think it's inarguable that if not the Meta, the category, I mean, it may not still be really even alive and kicking.

但是，我真的認為，如果沒有 Meta，這個類別可能就不會真正存在，甚至不會有生命力，這一點毋庸置疑。