Old Wine in NewBottles? Challenges, Opportunities, and Lines of Action in the Metaverse Era

After October, 2021 Zuckerberg’s announcement to change the name of Facebook into Meta, an old idea called Metaverse has gained more and more popularity in today’s business agenda. Many companies have recently started to make large investments in developing virtual environments that resemble real-life experiences. The term “Metaverse” was widely searched on Internet and searches rose dramatically in 2021. Yet despite this interest, there seems to be very limited understanding of what the term Metaverse exactly means; this book chapter intends to provide some clarifications. We begin by describing the concept of the Metaverse and discussing why it differs from gaming realities such as Second Life. Based on this definition, we then provide a classification of different types of the Metaverse. Drawing on a satisfactory panel of secondary data, in this book chapter we identify the opportunities that the Metaverse is opening up for specific industries, the challenges that still need to be solved and some lines of actions that large companies could take.