@Chris Trottier @Fediverse News They spent $13B on "inventing the Metaverse."

Only that they didn't invent the Metaverse. Either they believed they did, or they knew they didn't, but they had enough market power to bullshit everyone else into believing they did. For 99% of all people out there, #TheMetaverse refers to #HorizonWorlds.

As a matter of fact, however, the term #Metaverse has been used in conjunction with actually existing #VirtualWorlds at least as early as 2008, 15 years ago. That was the year when #OpenSimulator introduced the #Hypergrid, the first federation between independently-run virtual worlds, known as "grids" in #OpenSim lingo. The Hypergrid enabled you to visit grids with avatars registered on other grids. If anything deserved being called "metaverse," the Hypergrid became that.

Also, starting as early as 2008, single grids started using the term "metaverse" for themselves. In 2022, the oldest and once biggest German grid shut down after 14 years of operation: the #Metropolis Metaversum.

And guess what? OpenSim and the Hypergrid are still around. Not only still around, but growing. There are over 400 public grids and thousands upon thousands of small private grids, over 95% of which are connected to the Hypergrid. And there are still grids older than Zuck's Metaverse dreams which have "Metaverse" in their names such as the Alternate Metaverse which has gone by this name since late 2019.