You’ve probably heard the hype: the metaverse is going to change the way you live. 

A vision for the next step in the internet’s evolution, the metaverse refers to digital worlds in which people will gather to work, play and hang out. Some of those online spaces will be immersive 3D experiences and require fancy goggles to enjoy. Others will play out on a computer screen. The term’s been in flux, and might still keep evolving and renaming itself.

Tech hype cycles come and go. The metaverse could fizzle before it’s even realized. As of yet, however, interest continues to grow. Across gaming, NFTs and shopping, it’s become a repeated buzzword.

Microsoft‘s planned acquisition of ActivisionBlizzard for $69 billion, was explained as part of an expansion into metaverse. Last year, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, a nod to the social network’s ambition to be a prime mover in the new world. Rec Room and world-building games, like Roblox and Minecraft, all get rolled into discussions of what the metaverse is or will be.

The term metaverse has circulated for decades. Virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D computing – the technological concepts behind it — are older still. The current boom in interest is just the most recent peak in a years-long push to make these advances useful to everybody.

What’s changed is a shift in understanding, a conviction the internet needs to be reimagined. How far-reaching those changes end up being is anyone’s guess. After all, the road map for the metaverse is half-paved. It isn’t clear it’ll be completed as promised.

What’s for sure is that if there’s money to be made, big companies will be involved. In addition to Microsoft and Meta, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Valve, Epic, HTC and Apple are all dreaming up new ways of connecting online. So you’ll be hearing more about the metaverse in the years ahead. 

What is the metaverse?

Unsatisfyingly, the metaverse is a squishy concept. An evolution of the internet, it’s often described as online spaces where people can socialize, work and play as avatars. Those spaces are shared and always available; they don’t disappear when you’ve finished using them, like a Zoom call. The description is so broad that many people say the metaverse already exists in the digital worlds of Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite, which allow players to gather in 2D environments. Second Life, a nearly two-decade-old social-and-gaming platform, is the OG metaverse. (It’s being revamped.)

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other proponents see a deeper, more immersive experience that marries a host of existing technologies, such as VR headsets, mobile devices, personal computers and cloud-connected servers. These futurists envision the development of a 3D virtual world, one that you might enter while wearing a headset or AR glasses. There’s no agreement you’ll need VR or AR to get to the metaverse but they pretty much go hand in hand. That suggests these headsets will be compatible with whatever’s on offer. A new wave of VR and mixed reality headsets are expected this year from Meta, Sony, Apple and maybe others.

One common theme: The metaverse will be a virtual world that parallels our IRL lives. Digital neighborhoods, parks and clubs will spring up, possibly in a single virtual world or spread across many. Some people see a metaverse that overlaps with the physical world and includes AR overlays. Investors are already splashing out on plots of virtual land. Barbados has indicated it wants an embassy in the metaverse, underscoring the cachet the concept has generated. 

Naysayers are skeptical that the metaverse will be all that Zuck and others suggest. Many point to the cumbersome headsets that will be needed to access the most exciting chunks of the metaverse. (The inventor of the Playstation called them “simply annoying,” while a senior Meta executive called his own company’s headset “wretched.”) They argue that Big Tech hasn’t figured out how to curb hate speech, misinformation and bullying already on the web. Getting a handle on those problems in an even more freewheeling environment will be daunting, they say.

Will there be one metaverse? Or many metaverses?

That remains to be seen. No standards for the metaverse exist and lots of companies are clamoring to lay the groundwork others will follow. Facebook, Microsoft, Sony, Epic Games and a bunch of smaller companies are all working on projects with the hopes of grabbing first-mover advantage. It’s unclear whether one company’s VR headset will be compatible with another company’s expansive multiplayer world or cloud-based graphics. Most companies promise a metaverse that allows other companies in. But that requires them to agree on how they work together.

Meta, which plans to spend billions on its metaverse projects, says interoperability is crucial. If you have an avatar on Facebook, you should be able to use it on a Microsoft platform. That suggests a single metaverse. Try moving a skin you bought in Fortnite to another platform and you’ll quickly find those add-ons are stuck in the battle royale game. 

The vision of a single metaverse supporting services from lots of different companies is reminiscent of the utopian ideals of the early internet. When the early pioneers figured out how much money could be made online, however, all bets were off. It’ll likely be the same with the metaverse. If Zuck and others are right, too much money will be on the line for companies to allow customers to pick up and move. 

Our best guess – and it’s just a guess – is that the metaverse will start as a slate of competing platforms, each laying claim to being the metaverse. Think of an environment that looks like the early days of instant messaging, when services were fragmented. Over time, however, standards will emerge, and eventually the big players will use compatible technology, evolving into something that resembles email protocols. The internet broadly works that way now with battles between agreed-upon protocols and proprietary standards, content from a host of companies and competing software ecosystems.

What will it be like in the metaverse?

The idea behind the deluxe Metaverse – the one that requires a headset – is an immersive, 360-degree digital world. You’ll have your own avatar, which you’ll be able to design, and you’ll own digital assets, the titles of which will likely be recorded on a blockchain. Some think you’ll buy plots of digital land and build online houses, in which you can entertain your friends (or at least their avatars). 

That may sound fantastical or absurd, but bets on the value of digital land have already started. Tokens.com, a Canadian company, spent almost $2.5 million on virtual property in Decentraland, a 3D world platform that is a spiritual descendant of Geocities or Second Life. (Purchases in Decentraland are conducted with an ethereum blockchain token.) 

Others see a more fluid experience. Simpler versions of a metaverse experience, such as Roblox or Fortnite, are already available. Those games aren’t as immersive as the metaverse Zuck talks about, but they offer a reasonable sense of what’s being planned.

All the things we’re already doing on the internet point to how the metaverse may grow. It will be a bit of gaming, some Zoom telepresence, splashes of VR and AR, and plenty of social media. Expect many attempts to pull it all together so that it’s fun or useful. 

What kind of equipment do I need to enter the metaverse?

That depends on where you want to go. Facebook wants you to buy one of its Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets. That will set you back $300, although the hardware is self-contained and doesn’t require a PC or game console to use. There are also a number of other VR headset makers: Valve, HTC, HP and Sony, whose gear works with PCs or a PlayStation 4/5. Expect more headsets, some of which might start connecting with phones, by the end of the year.

A handful of other companies – Microsoft and Magic Leap, to name a couple –  make AR headsets, which layer digital information on top of the real world and tend to be a lot more expensive. Qualcomm and other companies are developing methods for AR glasses to work with phones, though most applications so far have remained experimental or business-focused. Snap’s prototype AR glasses, or glasses like the Nreal Light, show how much work is still needed to make them a purchase you’d even consider.

You can also enter existing metaverses, such as Roblox and Minecraft, from your computer, tablet or phone. It isn’t a 360-degree experience, but the popularity of these platforms speaks to their appeal.

Where did the metaverse come from?

Neal Stephenson coined the term in Snow Crash, a 1992 novel in which the main character, a pizza delivery driver, hangs out in an online virtual fantasy world. The idea got an update in 2011’s Ready Player One, a novel in which people gather in the Oasis metaverse, which inspired the launch of Facebook’s Oculus Rift.

Outside of fiction, Linden Lab created Second Life, a virtual world that launched in 2003 and attracted car companies, record labels and computer makers to open digital outposts. (CNET also had a presence in Second Life.) After a rush of hype, Second Life’s popularity slowly waned, though it’s still active. 

Games like Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite have also been described as metaverses. Fortnite has hosted concerts, including performances by rapper Travis Scott and pop star Ariana Grande, that attracted attention to the already popular shoot ’em up. Fortnite’s Soundwave Series is international and includes musicians from Egypt, Mali and Japan. All three games allow players to create worlds, a cornerstone of the metaverse concept.

Two years of a pandemic have prompted us to redefine “virtual.” No one’s perfected what the future will look like yet. But a rethinking of what it means to gather virtually and at scale is underway. And lots of people want to define it. 

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Digital payments company Square will create a new business focused on the Bitcoin cryptocurrency to help developers design decentralized financial products, CEO Jack Dorsey said in a series of tweets on Thursday.

The business will build “an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services,” Dorsey said. The new business hasn’t been named yet, said Dorsey, who also runs Twitter.

Square currently has three business arms: Seller, Cash App and Tidal, a music streaming service in which Square owns a majority stake. 

Dorsey’s ambition to expand Square’s businesses further into cryptocurrency is hardly a surprise. The Twitter boss has been an enthusiastic supporter of bitcoin, launching his own node to record transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain earlier this year. Earlier this month, Dorsey said Square would build its own Bitcoin hardware wallet for storing the cryptocurrency.

Dorsey and pal Jay-Z, the rapper who owned a majority of Tidal, formed the $24 million Btrust endowment earlier this year to “make Bitcoin the internet’s currency.”

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The London Underground, the world’s oldest subway system, is getting a mobile upgrade that will allow commuters to chatter away as they speed under the city. On Tuesday, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Tube riders would have full mobile coverage on the subway network by the end of 2024.

“I promised Londoners that if they re-elected me for a second term as Mayor I would deliver 4G throughout the Tube network,” Khan said in a statement posted on the Transport for London website. TFL is the city’s transit authority. All mobile service providers will be able to use the network, which will accommodate 5G if providers offer the next-generation service. 

Some busy stations, including Oxford Circus, will have coverage by the end of next year. 

Transport for London said the rollout, which is being overseen by BAI Communications, will help deliver service throughout the city by installing transmitters. It’ll bring fiber into London’s neighborhoods, allowing for gigabit-capable speeds to homes and businesses, as well as supporting digital inclusion.

The Underground won’t be the first subway system to make it easier for yakking passengers. New York’s subway system has had cell coverage since 2017.

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Apple is adding a digital legacy service for user accounts, allowing you to assign an administrator who can access your data in the event you die.

The administrator will sign in through a “legacy contact Apple ID” and will need an access key to see password-protected data on Apple devices. The administrator can also view data stored in iCloud, Apple’s cloud service. The data can be be downloaded.

The administrator won’t have access to your payment information, such as stored credit cards, or logins stored on your Keychain.

The digital legacy service was introduced at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicked off on Monday. The Cupertino, California, tech giant also unveiled upgrades its iOS software for iPhones and iPadOS software.

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• FaceTime gets Android, Windows support in browser

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Apple has delayed the launch of its new podcast subscription service to June, the company told creators in an email on Friday.

Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, unveiled last month, is designed to offer listeners perks such as ad-free listening, additional material and early access to new content. A parallel service, called channels, will allow listeners to browse groups of shows curated by creators.

The change in launch date follows difficulties some creators have experienced in using Apple Podcasts Connect, a portal for submitting shows and monitoring their performance. In its email, Apple  acknowledged that some creators had experienced problems. 

“Over the last few weeks, some creators have experienced delays in the availability of their content and access to Apple Podcasts Connect,” the email reads. “We’ve addressed these disruptions and encourage creators experiencing any issues to contact us.”

The news was earlier reported by 9to5Mac.

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For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites.

Uber said Thursday it would offer 10 million free or discounted rides to people seeking COVID-19 vaccinations, a pledge that mirrors a similar program the ride-hailing giant ran earlier this year. 

The company will partner with the National Urban League, the Morehouse School of Medicine and the National Action Network because communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, which has claimed more than 307,000 American lives. 

“We’ll work to ensure that those most in need can get to and from a vaccination appointment,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a blog post announcing the program. 

The offer of free rides comes as Uber seeks to get priority access to the vaccine for its drivers. The company has sent letters to both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and all 50 governors asking that drivers get vaccinated early. California and a handful of other states have recognized gig workers as providing “essential” during the pandemic.

A coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech has been approved in the US for emergency use. Another vaccine, made by Moderna, is expected to get approval soon.

In March, Uber offered 10 million rides and food deliveries to healthcare workers, seniors and others as the scope of the pandemic became clear.

See also: First US COVID-19 vaccinations have begun. Where you are in line and how long you could wait

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MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, said Tuesday that she’s given away more than $4 billion since July, when she said she’d donated nearly $1.7 billion of her wealth to charitable causes.

The gifts, which totaled $4,158,500,000, went to 384 organizations across the country, including food banks, emergency funds and services for the vulnerable. In a blog post, Scott said some of the money was also used to address inequities that had been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis, including debt relief, employment training and education.

“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” Scott wrote. “Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty.”

The gifts are part of Scott’s commitment as member of the Giving Pledge, an agreement among some of the world’s wealthiest people to donate at least half their money to charity in their lifetimes or in their wills. Her ex-husband, the world’s richest person, is notably absent from this group though he has substantially increased his charitable work over the past two years.

Scott, whose wealth is largely in shares of Amazon, is the 18th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, with a net work of $60.7 billion.

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Sports fans got a closer look at Disney‘s plans for ESPN, a sports broadcasting powerhouse that’s transitioning from cable TV mainstay into a streaming service.

On Thursday, Disney said it reached an agreement to add Southeastern Conference college football to its schedule beginning with the 2024 season. The conference, home to heavyweights Auburn, Alabama and Georgia, is among the most watched college athletics. The deal will make Disney’s ABC network host to the SEC’s Saturday afternoon games, as well as some prime time games and the annual conference championship.

Disney, which unveiled the agreement Thursday at its annual investor day presentation, also said it had secured the exclusive rights to the PGA Tour for its ESPN Plus streaming service. The deal includes four live feeds covering up to eight groups per tournament.

Disney, like other media companies, is trying to capture more viewers on streaming services while maintaining revenue from its traditional cable packages, which remain more lucrative. ESPN is a particularly delicate task because conventional cable TV viewership for the sports network towers over the number of its online users. An estimated 80 million households subscribe to a cable TV package that includes live sports, according to MoffettNathanson, compared with 11.5 million subscribers to ESPN Plus. If Disney moves too quickly, it risks losing the big revenue stream generated by ESPN’s cable audience.

Disney raised its subscriber forecasts for the sports streaming service to between 20 million and 30 million by the end of fiscal 2024, up from the 8-12 million subscribers it had previously forecast. ESPN Plus is expected to be profitable by 2023.

A full jump to streaming-only would upend television sports, a complex media ecosystem of intricate contracts and gerrymandered broadcast rights. It would sound the death knell for traditional cable and showcase the triumph of cord-cutting.

Disney is moving in that direction. Earlier this year, Disney hiked the price of ESPN Plus by a dollar, to $5.99 a month. A bundle that also includes Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu with ads will also remain at $12.99 a month. 

Like sports leagues themselves, ESPN Plus has been affected by the coronavirus, which postponed major sporting events and truncated some seasons. Basketball and golf resumed after a months-long hiatus, and both the NFL and college football seasons are underway.

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Flipboard, a popular news aggregator app, introduced on Tuesday a suite of new curation features, including analytical tools that allow creators of its virtual magazines to refine content to suit their audiences. 

The new Curator Pro tools give individuals, bloggers and publishers who create Flipboard magazines, which are managed collections of story links, a range of data on engagement and popularity of their selections. The data includes a 30-day history of the most-opened stories, the most-shared stories and the number of new followers an account has enrolled.

Previously, magazine curators had a limited amount of basic data that included articles by day, viewers per day and page flips by day. Page flips are the way new material is added to a magazine.

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Flipboard CEO Mike McCue says the new analytics will allow curators to assemble more engaging magazines, which will in turn help the platform’s algorithm deliver more appealing collections to readers. The tools are part of a broader effort to refine curation on the news aggregator.

“We’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into curation on Flipboard this year,” McCue said.

The new features come as Flipboard broadens both the ways content can be presented within the app and the types of content the app distributes. Earlier this year, the company introduced Storyboards, static mini-packages similar to special reports, that broke with Flipboard’s hallmark aesthetic: a presentation mimicking the look and feel of physical publication. It also launched a paid TV service that provides professionally shot short-form videos from major publications. Flipboard also introduced a local news initiative in 23 North American metropolitan regions.

Flipboard competes in the crowded news aggregation space. The app, which debuted on the original iPad in 2010, boasts more than 30 million magazines. 

In addition to the data features, Curator Pro includes editing tools that make it easier to tweak titles and descriptions, as well as refine magazines for search engine optimization. The new tools are live for all users now.

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A deal for Oracle and Walmart to acquire stakes in the US operations of popular video app TikTok appeared in jeopardy as details of the complicated arrangement were disputed.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would revoke his initial approval of the deal if ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, retained a stake in a newly created company that would house the US operations. The three companies said over the weekend they had struck a deal that gives Oracle and Walmart a combined 20% stake in a new company, TikTok Global, that would provide service to American users and run on Oracle’s cloud computing service.

“Everything is going to be moved into a cloud done by Oracle,” the president told Fox News. “It’s going to be totally controlled by Oracle … and if we find that they don’t have total control, then we’re not going to approve the deal.” 

The president’s comments came as the partners themselves appeared to have differing interpretations of the deal, which would see the creation of TikTok Global, a US company whose shares would be listed on an American exchange as part of an initial public offering that would take place place “in less than 12 months.” 

Over the weekend, ByteDance said it would retain an 80% stake in TikTok Global until an IPO occurred. US investors own roughly 40% of ByteDance. On Monday morning, an Oracle executive said ByteDance would have no stake in the new company.

“Upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global,” Ken Glueck, an executive vice president at Oracle said.

The tentative agreement and the disputed understanding of it follow a tumultuous period for TikTok, which Trump has called a national security threat because it’s owned by a Chinese tech company. The administration alleges that the Chinese government could use data gathered by the TikTok app to “track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.” TikTok has repeatedly pushed back, noting that it wouldn’t turn over data to the Chinese government even if it were asked to.

The deal, which still requires the approval of the Chinese government, came just hours before a ban on new downloads of TikTok was set to take place. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Saturday that the ban would be pushed out to Sept. 27 at 11:59 p.m.

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The administration has issued two executive orders concerning TikTok. An Aug. 6 order would have barred any US transactions with ByteDance and was set to go into effect on Sunday. A separate executive order, issued Aug. 14, ordered ByteDance to sell its US operations by Nov. 12. Trump told reporters on Saturday that he had given his “blessing” to the deal, Bloomberg reported. 

Intelligence agencies have determined that Chinese authorities could collect data through TikTok, though there’s no evidence they’ve done so, according to The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal found that the TikTok app for Android surreptitiously collected device identifiers known as MAC addresses. The practice ended in November.

Trump’s high-profile attacks on TikTok and ByteDance have already taken their toll on the app, which has an estimated 100 million users in the US. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, a former Disney executive, resigned in late August after just three months in the position. He told employees in a letter that the role he signed up for looks different because of the US administration’s pressure on ByteDance to sell its US business. Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s US general manager, is the interim head of TikTok.

Talking TikTok

• TikTok, WeChat downloads will be barred from US starting Sunday
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Two lawsuits have been filed over Trump’s executive orders. On Aug. 24, TikTok and ByteDance sued Trump and Ross, alleging the administration had violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment because the company wasn’t given a chance to be heard. The lawsuit also alleges the president acted beyond his legal authority because his administration hasn’t proved that TikTok poses a national security threat. The president’s order furthers Trump’s “campaign of anti-China rhetoric in the run-up to the US election,” the lawsuit says. It’s unclear what will happen with the lawsuit now that a deal has been approved.The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a separate lawsuit filed on the same day, Patrick Ryan, a TikTok employee, alleged the administration’s actions could prevent the company’s 1,500 US workers from being paid. The Department of Justice later said employees could continue to be paid.

The US isn’t the only country that’s targeted TikTok and Chinese apps. India banned TikTok, along with WeChat and dozens of other Chinese apps in late June, citing national security concerns. The ban came after 20 Indian soldiers were killed during a clash with Chinese troops along a disputed Himalayan border. 

TikTok is known for its quirky videos of people lip-syncing and dancing, in clips that run between 15 seconds and 1 minute. But it’s also become a hub for political talk ahead of the US presidential election. The app had logged more than 2 billion downloads as of April. TikTok had 689 million monthly active users globally as of July and was available in more than 200 countries. Uncertainty over TikTok’s future prompted some US users to direct their fans to their Instagram and YouTube accounts. Facebook, which is notorious for copying its rivals, released a TikTok competitor called Reels on Instagram in early August. 

ByteDance purchased Musical.ly for around $1 billion in 2017 and that app, popular among US teens, was rebranded as TikTok. 

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