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BIGS GET BIGGER: THE METAVERSE WORLD
Today, tech giant Microsoft will shovel out $68.7 billion in-cash to gobble up video game giant Activision Blizzard.
Getting bigger and bigger and expanding into the meta and digital world, with a market cap of nearly $3 trillion, Microsoft, paid $7.5 billion for game maker Bethesda, last year, bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion and Minecraft maker Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.
Indeed, “METAWORLD” is one of our Top 10 Trends for 2022, a trend that will dominate much of the 21st century and beyond. And clearly Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella agrees who said: “When we think about our vision for what a metaverse can be, we believe there won’t be a single, centralized metaverse.”
TREND FORECAST: The Metaverse Geeks will celebrate their overturn of the human experience. The generation now entering adulthood, is primed to engage these fast-evolving technologies across every aspect of their lives. Their AI/VR technologies will sweep industries, households and governments worldwide. More and more jobs will be replaced by robotics and AI programs will become, in effect, virtual human beings; they’ll take tests, advance their knowledge base through trial and error, perform complex human functions and learn from their mistakes and failures.
TREND FORECAST: This is the New ABnormal. Just as the Industrial Revolution sapped the creative uniqueness of individuals with mass production, the metaverse world will further sap the human spirit from the already hi-tech addicted global population.
Upcoming generations will get degrees, honors and salutations along the way, and become motivated to become more “Meta” and less human.
PLANET FITNESS WILL BUY FRANCHISEE FOR $800 MILLION
Gym chain Planet Fitness will buy Sunshine Fitness, its first franchisee, for $800 million, including $475 million in cash and the balance in debt.
Sunshine operates 114 Planet Fitness gyms across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina.
The sale will give the corporation ownership of about 10 percent of its locations, the company said.
TRENDPOST: Corporations buying their franchisees is just one more way for Bigs to get bigger, no different than a company buying back its own stock to raise its market value without producing any new products or benefits for its customers.