Metaverse

There’s a small chance that people exploring the vast world of the internet may stumble across the Metaverse Blogger without any knowledge about what a “Metaverse” even is, or what in the world this blog is even about. For the benefit of those who don’t know what the term “Metaverse” means, I’ll take a moment to introduce you to the concept. For some background reading, you may want to read the history of how the term “metaverse” was coined.

The word metaverse is representational. That’s to say, the term itself stands for and represents a whole wide variety of different programs that exist on the internet; one might even say it’s a category to which dozens (or hundreds) of virtual environments, such as Activeworlds, Second Life, IMVU, and others, exist within. There is no inherent link between any of these programs, they simply exist in their own realities, with their own user followings. Sometimes people are tempted to liken these different realities to different websites, likening Activeworlds and Second Life to Yahoo and Google, for instance. This would be highly inaccurate in that both Yahoo and Google can be viewed and interacted with through an external third party means (your web browser), such as Firefox.

The metaverse is a bit different than that. While there are some metaverse realities that have begun to bridge the gap between, it’s as of this moment not really possible to take your existence (account, or avatar) from one program, and enter another program. You cannot move seamlessly between Activeworlds and Second Life, for instance.

So in a nut shell, the term “metaverse” represents kind of a category of programs that allow users to chat and interact with one another, somewhat three dimensionally. Each program does this differently, offering various features that may not be found in all other programs in the category. The Metaverse Blogger, seeks to document the goings-on and present philosophy about the various unique metaverse programs, and the metaverse at large.