A 3D metaverse has been attempted since the mid-90's before such a word was in use. There were numerous companies all promising we would be flying around a 3D Internet going into virtual malls and virtual stores to buy things, because that's all you can do on the Internet obviously. One company had plans to charge retailers more money to get their virtual stores closer to the spawn points of users.

Here's a much later example. https://youtu.be/d7EjqWbwmsk Note that the video was uploaded 14 years ago. There's more videos on youtube but it's hard to find them as I keep getting videos from malls in the 90's.