If done right, it potentially has more killer apps than a stick can be shook at.
Done right means having a live digital twin of the real world, continuously updated in the digital world of the metaverse.
Like that, with competitive manufacturer "Designer" MR glasses quickly replacing mobile phones, we would all see our real world digitally enhanced with live things created in the digital world, like street signs, virtual artworks, see-through 3D maps within real buldings mapping corridors, and even the people walking in them, roads through mountains, planned buidlings on land about to be built on, virtual traffic wardens on the road, virtual street lighiing in unlit streets, dial-up live and Ai virtual peformers in the street, on railway platforms, and even in moving trains and aircraft.
A further bonus would be that we would all get more social, no longer needing to remove our attention from friends, business associates, colleagues, family, lovers or whatever to check our emails, swipe tinder, or whatever, and it would all be private in our glasses, nobody looking over our shoulder to see what we are looking at.
The problem is it fundamentally can't be done with a for-profit company or entity, for the same reason profit driven vaccines can never actually fix a pandemic, in order for profit to be made, scarcity has to exist, which means some people will never have it, which defeats the object, which in turn when realised by the public, including shareholders, comes back around to kill profits.
We've seen many profit driven attempts to create a metaverse come and go.
Facebook are making some noises, in an attempt to rescue flagging profits. If they do go ahead with plans to create a metaverse, it might be the biggest mistake they ever make, unless they intend to make their company a non-profit which is handed over to open source at some point, in which case it would be awesome, and a real metaverse might actually be on.
But pigs might fly :)
I personally don't believe we will see it until something like money-as-sunlight becomes accepted, which absolutely will fund it.
That might sound like a long way away, but it is much closer than most realise, as I've explained in my story about the Bitcoin Kardashev Hinge.
