Hi. It’s Brady again.

The metaverse is a concept that is nearly three decades old, but, a month ago, it was a new word for many. Then, in the past weeks, it felt like we couldn’t go a day without hearing about it.

A major reason for that was Facebook’s rebranding. But over in China, where Facebook—ahem, Meta—doesn’t operate consumer-facing platforms, what’s going on?

While major companies like Tencent and Baidu are building out their own interpretations of the metaverse, smaller companies are capitalizing on the buzzword. This has fueled FOMO in the stock market, with listed companies riding the hype and sucking in cash from retail investors. Experienced voices are warning against jumping on the bandwagon, but that hardly makes a difference.

Mengyuan wrote about this. You can check out her article here.

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