Our new Live Interview Series, Venturing In VC, premieres next week on Jan. 4, 2022. Venturing in VC is a live interview series where our host, Landon Campbell, interviews investors about how they broke into VC, their daily routines, views on the future, and lessons learned along the way. Who’s our first guest? None other than Turner Novak, Founder of Banana Capital — a founder-focused fund that invests anywhere from Pre-Seed to Pre-IPO with an average initial check size of $150,000-$300,000. Save your free seat to learn how Turner views the world and shares lessons he’s learned along his journey. Inside.com/vivc Venturing in VC is sponsored by SeedInvest — Fundraising isn’t easy, but it just got easier. Apply to start your raise on SeedInvest, or browse highly vetted startups to invest in. |
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 New York City's One Times Square and its surroundings will be recreated in Decentraland for New Year's Eve. Jameston, which owns the 25-story Times Tower, is bringing the popular NYE destination to the metaverse through a partnership with Decentraland backer Digital Currency Group. More: - The virtual One Times Square will be made up of 170 parcels of Decentraland property.
- Called "MetaFest 2022," the celebration will feature rooftop VIP lounges, music performances, and NFT art galleries.
- GrowYourBase and MetaVenture Studios, the metaverse development firms, are behind the construction.
- The price to acquire the virtual real estate wasn't disclosed. It's said to be part of Jamestown's "larger digital asset strategy."
- Jamestown President Michael Phillips said it aims to bring the NYE event "to a wider audience and see how the metaverse can enhance it."
COINDESK 
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Tweets from developers on Christmas show just how popular VR was this holiday season. On Christmas Day, Oculus VR became the most popular app in Apple's App Store for the first time. Here are some numbers that back up the hype: - Free app Rec Room reported more than 1 million VR player logins in the 60-hour period on Christmas. The social VR experience saw the same number of VR users in a single month just earlier this year.
- Hand Physics Lab had "unprecedented" sales of its app on Christmas Day, even higher than at launch.
- Gorilla Tag, which is on App Lab, said it had 344,000 unique users and a peak of 26,000 concurrent users during the Christmas weekend, calling it "absolutely bonkers."
- GOLF+'s founder and CEO shared a graph showing a huge spike on Christmas, superseding sales on Christmas Eve, which was its best sales day ever.
UPLOADVR
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As harassment and hate speech are becoming more prevalent in the metaverse, there remain few options to report the bad behaviors, according to the New York Times. The Center for Countering Digital Hate predicts that a "violating incident" happens every seven minutes in VRChat. More: - Meta executive Andrew Bosworth has said that moderating people's behavior in the metaverse "at any meaningful scale is practically impossible."
- Meanwhile, Meta has pledged to invest $50M on research to develop its products "responsibly" and had asked employees to test out the metaverse, according to the Times.
- In one recent case, a tester playing Horizon Worlds was groped by another user.
- Callum Hood, the head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, recently saw more than 100 incidents on VRChats over an 11-hour period, including violent and sexual threats.
- Wearing a haptic vest or future full-body suit complicates the issue further.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Google is said to be "nurturing a new project" in AR after acquiring smart glasses company North in 2020. Google declined to comment to the New York Times, which first reported the news on Thursday in a larger piece about AR and VR hardware. More: - The project comes years after Google released Google Glass in 2013. The company now sells it specifically for the enterprise market after it failed as a consumer device.
- Meanwhile, new job listings show Google is hiring employees to build software for future augmented reality products.
- The company recently hired former Meta/Oculus VR manager Mark Lucovsky to lead an "Augmented Reality OS team" as it seeks to ramp up its AR ambitions.
- The team will develop the software components for controlling the hardware on AR products.
- Other postings note that Google is working on an "innovative AR device" but did not describe its plans further.
- The positions are located in the U.S. and Waterloo, Canada, where North is based.
9TO5GOOGLE
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Today's Inside Tech newsletter took a look at how AR/VR and the metaverse could grow and evolve in 2022. Here are some of the predictions: - More people will access early "metaverses" through VR and AR headsets, as well as PCs, gaming consoles, and phones.
- In his 2021 year-end blog, Bill Gates predicted that most virtual meetings will shift from 2D camera image grids to the metaverse, which he described as a "3D space with digital avatars."
- Consumers are expected to spend a record $3B on metaverse apps in 2022, according to App Annie predictions.
- The idea of what constitutes a metaverse will continue to be a debate topic. (For example, do worlds have to be interconnected to be considered the metaverse?)
- Some of the metaverses will be crypto-native and compete with those launched by Meta and other corporate and gaming entities.
- According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, AR and/or VR headsets from Apple, Meta, and Sony are due to launch in 4Q 2022, 2H 2022, and 2Q 2022, respectively, fueling access to the metaverse.
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ICYMI: Elon Musk said his Neuralink brain implant could place users fully in VR. Speaking with The Babylon Bee earlier this month, the CEO said the microchip could be a preferable option to bulky headsets. He has previously described the microchip implant as "FitBit in your head." More: - Although the Babylon Bee is typically a satire website, a sort of conservative answer to The Onion, Musk's interview with the Bee's CEO, editor, and creative director was real.
- Speaking about the metaverse, Musk said he doesn't envision a future where people would leave the real world to exist in a virtual one.
- "I think we're far from disappearing into the metaverse; this sounds just kind of buzzwordy," he said.
- The CEO also cited motion sickness caused by VR headsets and possible eyesight issues as deterrents.
- "In the long term, a sophisticated Neuralink could put you fully into virtual reality," he argued.
- Musk hopes to begin human trials of the Neuralink brain implant in 2022, pending FDA approval.
- The project has a chance to "restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury," he said.
ITECHPOST
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Quick hits: - SeedInvest is where high-growth startups go to fundraise online. Apply now to get started.*
- The Quest New Years Sale is going on through 11:59 p.m. PT Jan. 2.
- The metaverse is expected to be a big buzzword at next week's CES 2022.
- Gaming and the metaverse were recently chosen as the top two use cases for NFTs in 2022.
- DAOs may be the core of governance models of the metaverse, promoting its "complete decentralization," according to Ontology.
- Videos of Peyton Manning playing M6 Sports' virtual reality QB simulator appeared on social media.
- Valve list of 2021's best-selling SteamVR games had no new titles. The games that made the most revenue featured the usuals — Superhot VR, Beat Saber, Half-Life: Alyx — but no titles that actually launched in 2021.
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Upcoming Events: - January 04 - Venturing in VC Episode #1 - featuring Turner Novak (Register Here)
- January 05 - DAOs and the intersection of tech & media with Kinjal Shah (Blockchain Capital) (Register Here)
- January 06 - Augmented and Virtual Reality with Timoni West (VP of AR/VR at Unity) (Register Here)
- January 11 - The Business of Interactive Gambling with Jon Kaplowitz (Penn) (Register Here)
- January 11 - Venturing in VC Episode #2 (Register Here)
- January 13 - Education within the Metaverse with Steve Grubbs (VictoryXR) (Register Here)
- January 25 - Need To Know NoCoder - Leon Young (Cogniss) (Register Here)
- January 27 - Understanding the Metaverse (Register Here)
- February 03 - Blockchain Gaming & Play-to-Earn Economies (Register Here)
- February 10 - The Business of Wellness (Register Here)
- February 17 - Customer Acquisition in a post iOS 14 world (Register Here)
- February 23 - Need to Know NoCoder: Derya Sousa (Kianda Technologies) (Register Here)
- February 24 - Alternative Investments (Register Here)
- March 03 - The $12B Appetite for Amazon Aggregators (Register Here)
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 |  | Beth is an Inside Analyst and a former public policy/investigative reporter. She has covered AI, VR, technology, and e-commerce for Inside. When she's not busy writing, she's hiking in Arizona's desert, playing pickleball, or trying out new Mexican food recipes. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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