> The fact that 374 S&P 500 companies are openly discussing it shows the opposite of “no clear upside” — it shows wide strategic interest.

There was a weird moment in the late noughties where seemingly every big consumer company was creating a presence in Second Life. There was clearly a lot of strategic interest...

Second Life usage peaked in 2009 and never recovered, though it remains somewhat popular amongst furries.

Bizarrely, this kind of happened _again_ with the very similar "metaverse" stuff a decade or so later, though it burned out somewhat quicker and never hit the same levels of farcical nonsense; I don't think any actual _countries_ opened embassies in "the metaverse", say (https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/sweden-first-to-o...).