Metaverse opportunities and challenges: A research agenda and editorial on the special issue on the evolution of Metaverse platforms (part 2)

The growing adoption of Metaverse offers an exciting opportunity to connect stakeholders on these technology platforms across industries. These platforms offer capabilities to interact, engage, transact and create different user experiences and functional values for users onboarded. The research on Metaverse is still at a nascent stage and our editorial provides research directions in Metaverse as a unique IT artefact. The current editorial is the second part of the special issue on Metaverse and introduces 8 new articles. We further synthesize all the empirical evidences in Metaverse in this special issue. Subsequently we propose a conceptual layered framework for future researchers to extend when they work on Metaverse platforms. Here the bottom layer starts with the technology artifacts and gradually showcase techno-functional features, before guiding the users towards the adoption and appropriation of Metaverse platforms which further shapes impacts on individuals, organizations and societies.