Is Gather.town 
part of the metaverse? I guess it is. It lives on the web and let's us meet in gardens, classrooms or meeting halls as tiny avatars. You can install a piano or a fountain and link to all kinds of web assets. Camera and microphone enable videoconferencing so that your physical self is present together with your avatar form. Of course there is also text chat available.
Our group Metacaugs uses it on a weekly basis, we're a group of internationally distributed people discussing meta-cognition, fedwiki, futurism, metaverse and other stuff. We also read books together, these days we're immersed in Calvino's Invisible Cities.
If you want to join us, you can contact us on Telegram .