Tootfinder

Meta rolls out link sharing to let users invite up to eight people into their Hyperscape virtual rooms via a Quest 3 or 3S headset, or the Horizon mobile app (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/825705/meta-hyperscape-social-links-capt…

Meta’s Hyperscape is ready to turn your real living room into a VR hangout
Meta is rolling out the ability to visit virtual worlds captured with its photorealistic Hyperscape tech with groups of people instead of solo.

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Yukno, Marco Kleebauer:
🎵 Metaverse
#NowPlaying #Yukno #MarcoKleebauer
https://open.spotify.com/track/1hLBEOChVe00O5l7MN9AC5

Zehn Jahre und 100 Milliarden Dollar später: Wo bleibt Metas Metaverse?
Meta hat über 100 Milliarden Dollar in Virtual und Augmented Reality investiert. Was hat Meta erreicht, und was bleibt Vision? Eine Bestandsaufnahme.

I do not think that Meta's Metaverse failed cause the devs weren't efficient enough. It's conceptually flawed and underbaked at best, without vision and direction. A toy Mark no longer cares too much about.
(And even getting 5% more efficiency out of LLMs is a stretch, studies show improvement of 1 or 2% at best - because you have to spend a lot of time to clean up the generated mess, especially if you are building frameworks and foundational technologies)

Meta Tells Workers Building Metaverse to Use AI to ‘Go 5x Faster’
Meta says that its coders should be working five times faster and that it expects "a 5x leap in productivity."

Memo: Vishal Shah, Meta's VP of Metaverse, tells his team to use AI to "go 5X faster" and expects 80% of them to integrate AI into their day-to-day by Q4 (Jason Koebler/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-mark-zuckerberg-ai-push-metaverse/

Meta Tells Its Metaverse Workers to Use AI to ‘Go 5X Faster’
Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse chief is urging employees to adopt AI across every workflow as part of a broader shift inside the company.

Beim Meta(verse) wird nach 100 Milliarden Ausgaben und wenig Einnahmen jetzt wohl mal die Ausgabenbremse aktiviert.
https://www.heise.de/news/Teures-Metaverse-Zuckerberg-will-angeblich-Investitionen-zurueckfahren-11103145.html

Teures Metaverse: Zuckerberg will angeblich Investitionen zurückfahren
Metas Metaverse-Abteilung steht vor einschneidenden Sparmaßnahmen, berichtet Bloomberg. Trotzdem werde weiterhin an neuer Hardware gearbeitet.

Guess that whole Metaverse idea didn’t have legs after all
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-04/meta-s-zuckerberg-plans-deep-cuts-for-metaverse-efforts

Meta Tells Workers Building Metaverse to Use AI to ‘Go 5x Faster’ https://www.404media.co/meta-tells-workers-building-metaverse-to-use-ai-to-go-5x-faster/

A look at the rising popularity of virtual K-pop stars, usually created by artists wearing motion sensor suits, and the labor rights questions they raise (Michelle Kim/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/metaverse-kpop-idols/

The metaverse is rewriting the rules of who can be a K-pop star
In an industry studded with megastars like BTS and Blackpink, virtual idols are building powerful new fandoms even while their true identities remain obscured.

Montag: Musk-Klage gegen Apple & OpenAI, Raumgleiter-Test ohne Zukunftsaussicht
xAI-Klage wegen Verschwörung Meilensteine für Dream Chaser Fragen zu Metaverse-Milliarden Online-Weiterbildung in der Krise 6G-Netz ohne China-Technik

Sources: Meta does not plan to abandon building the metaverse, and expects to shift the savings from the layoffs into investments in its AR glasses (Mike Isaac/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/technology/meta-cuts-metaverse-unit.html

Meta Weighs Cuts to Its Metaverse Unit
Meta plans to direct its investments to focus on wearables like its augmented reality glasses but does not plan to abandon building the metaverse.

Epic Games partners with Unity to bring games made with Unity Engine to Fortnite in 2026, part of Epic's longterm vision to make Fortnite into an open metaverse (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/report/823233/for

Fortnite is getting Unity games
Epic Games is teaming up with Unity to bring games made using Unity’s engine into Fortnite.

The difference between the metaverse and AI is that the metaverse was gated to quite an expensive gadget that didn't have any other purpose.
AI is "free", anyone can try with little effort and investment.
Even if it's going to be a failure, this one will stick with us much longer

Excellent read: why growth stock companies are always desperately pumping up one bubble or another, spending billions to hype the pivot to video, or cryptocurrency, or NFTs, or Metaverse, or AI?
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/

🕶️ Community Analysis of Social Virtual Reality Based on Large-Scale Log Data of a Commercial Metaverse Platform
#vr

Community Analysis of Social Virtual Reality Based on Large-Scale Log Data of a Commercial Metaverse Platform
This study quantitatively analyzes the structural characteristics of user communities within Social Virtual Reality (Social VR) platforms supporting head-mounted displays (HMDs), based on large-scale log data. By detecting and evaluating community structures from data on substantial interactions (defined as prolonged co-presence in the same virtual space), we found that Social VR platforms tend to host numerous, relatively small communities characterized by strong internal cohesion and limited …

That was the weirdest thing about the Metaverse: That Mark Zuckerberg having more money than god couldn't spend a few buck on people who could actually develop a compelling vision for their toy.
https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/115350074152009101

Community Analysis of Social Virtual Reality Based on Large-Scale Log Data of a Commercial Metaverse Platform
Hiroto Tsutsui, Takefumi Hiraki, Yuichi Hiroi, Shoichi Hasegawa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23654

Community Analysis of Social Virtual Reality Based on Large-Scale Log Data of a Commercial Metaverse Platform
This study quantitatively analyzes the structural characteristics of user communities within Social Virtual Reality (Social VR) platforms supporting head-mounted displays (HMDs), based on large-scale log data. By detecting and evaluating community structures from data on substantial interactions (defined as prolonged co-presence in the same virtual space), we found that Social VR platforms tend to host numerous, relatively small communities characterized by strong internal cohesion and limited …

@… was so into the idea of "the metaverse" only four years ago that he renamed the damn company to "Meta" and now it isn't the next big thing anymore.
https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/115663179089382328

With Facebook having hired Apple's design guy, will they get Liquid Legs for the Metaverse

Podcast: Meta Tells Workers to ‘Go 5x Faster’ with AI https://www.404media.co/podcast-meta-tells-workers-to-go-5x-faster-with-ai/

Sources: Meta plans deep budget cuts to its metaverse efforts in 2026, potentially as high as 30% and most likely including layoffs as early as January (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-04/meta-s…

Internal memo: Meta's head of AI product Nat Friedman says Vishal Shah, who previously led the metaverse unit, is joining his team to lead AI product management (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/89a089db-432e-44eb-96e3-21f9ffce555c

Sources: Infinite Reality, rebranded as Napster, told staff that $3B in funding from an unnamed investor is not coming, calling itself a "victim of misconduct" (Phoebe Liu, Iain Martin/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/202<…

Napster Said It Raised $3 Billion From A Mystery Investor. Now The ‘Investor’ And ‘Money’ Are Gone
Forbes raised questions about a massive funding round metaverse-turned-AI firm Napster supposedly raised in January. The money is never coming, the company said Thursday.