New “Second Life” are popping up everywhere!
3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 271
News 1. SecondLive, remember? What?
SecondLive is NOT Second Life, but is a new metaverse platform — a place where people can meet and play. It just received $30m from the crypto specialist Binance (namely the Binance Smart Chain funds). One chooses an icon and then goes in a “surface” like exhibitions, dance floors, malls and workplaces. Opinion: A difficult one to research: the activities are very low on the platform, the account is linked with staking, mining and crypto. It looks very basics, has no headquarter to be found… but it marks the rise of metaverse/blockchain mixed use case.
Help us in comment to “decode” and understand SecondLive!
News 2. Microsoft Mesh launched in March, revived now
It was in March that Microsoft launched Mesh, a platform to develop holography, VR and AR for any distribution channel — VR set, mobile, laptops. After Facebook going Meta, Microsoft re-announced Mesh with a feature on Teams for “metaverse” meeting on the popular streaming service. Opinion: Mesh appears as a develop platform in the metaverse area: both holoportation and avatars — quite unique. Microsoft lists the possible use cases: get remote expertise, train together, collaborate, virtually design in 3D — very similar to the use cases presented for the HoloLens. However Mesh works for all platforms — a major change.
Microsoft replies to Meta!
News 3. Roblox ups and downs
Roblox, the immersive game company, that went public in 2020 is experiencing ups and downs. One last week was the server, up with pop star Zara Larsson earning 1 million $ for merchandising on the Roblox app, and the Squid Game game is rocketing. Roblox will soon publish new quarter results — the latest showed a revenue of $450m and a loss of $140m. Opinion: Intended at 6 to 12 year olds, Roblox has grown audience and addresses a much older group. Just now 45.000 are simultaneously playing Squid Game, the Roblox game of it. The server offtime was bad news, but in a way normal for an app growing that fast and with many AR features.
Love and test the Roblox app, now!
Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon Innovations (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting innovations in main tech geographies, AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with an opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch.
Come back next Monday and share your opinion.
