Paul is willing to invite his friends to his new apartment. However, few of his friends are based in the USA, while few are in UAE, India, and other parts of the world and they can’t attend the housewarming ceremony. Paul can invite his metaverse friends to his physical home, and his friends as avatars can appear at the home physically through technologies such as AR/VR/MR and holograms. Meanwhile, the avatars can stay in a virtual meeting room in the metaverse and talk to Paul in the physical environment (his home) through a Zoom-alike conversation window in a 3D virtual world. This new paradigm is the Metaverse. It creates a hard-to-reach environment to provide a surreal experience and people in the communities and across the globe can come together to work, shop, attend classes, pursue hobbies, enjoy social gatherings, and much more.
The word ‘Metaverse’ is a combination of ‘meta’ that implies transcending and ‘Verse’ means universe. Metaverse, therefore, is a hypothetical synthetic environment linked to the physical world, wherein users interact using digital avatars and are based on the technologies that enable multisensory interactions with virtual environments, people, and digital objects. This concept goes beyond commerce and entertainment to create a truly virtual artificial community that integrates innovation, human imagination, planetary thinking, and global digital culture which makes it a natural succession of the current internet.
Recently Facebook rebranded itself as ‘Meta’ and is planning to spend $10 billion this year, not just this, the status of the metaverse is growing every moment to the extent that Microsoft has also entered the fray with plans to release software & hardware tools related to the metaverse in the coming days and BTS, the leading K-pop around the world, has introduced its new song “Dynamite” in a metaverse game called “Fortnite”. These are just a few names, other leading companies that are investing in this concept are Nvidia, Epic Games, ByteDance, Roblox, Nextech, etc. The concept has become hype and is rising; however, to continue growing and not end as a fad, many challenges like affordability, privacy, security, etc need to be navigated along with the up-gradation of current computer systems and technologies.
Pillars of Metaverse Technology Enablers
Key characteristics of the Metaverse
User-generated Content
For metaverse to scale, community-sourced content creation is essential. In metaverse, creating content will be most likely not limited to professional designers, but everyone, companies, institutions, and maybe even governments will have a right to create content. This creates unlimited possibilities and also the way to get your content manipulated by other users. It is therefore essential to consider technical content control.
Avatar
Be it meetings, going skydiving, bungee jumping, visiting ancient places, events, museums, or even having a ping pong or chess match, Metaverse allows avatars that can let users see themselves accurately presented on-screen. Avatars are central to the metaverse as they enable necessary interoperability between the metaverse’s many features.
Edge and Cloud
Metaverse offers a highly immersive customer experience; however, to enable this, it requires high-speed processing demands that necessitate transcending to the cloud and adopting edge computing. The stable and comprehensive functionalities that the cloud offers can supplement Metaverse’s existing local infrastructure.
Decentralized P2P Economy
Play-to-earn games are already enabling a new earning economy, persistent ownership of unique digital items that can be traded will be replaced by an official NFT marketplace. Metaverse participants will be able to supply goods and services in exchange for anything that is considered valuable by others like virtual gold, in-world items, NFTs, e-money, etc.
Interoperability & Standards
Interoperability in metaverse allows to interact with different Metaverse projects, utilize the services and features, enable cross-chain social connecting, trading, and other such activities that are not possible in a siloed ecosystem without disconnections and interruptions. The participants can use their virtual items cross-platform, such as an unlocked vehicle to another adventure game, and their favorite clothes can be worn in different concerts and events.
Why is there hype around Metaverse?
Beyond providing persistent, decentralized, collaborative and interoperable opportunities, Metaverse enables businesses to extend digitally. There are several use cases and the concept can bring unlimited opportunities across multiple industries. The business benefits it enables are:
• Adds new revenue streams
• Discovers new business models.
• Enhance reach to a new audience
• Increase customer acquisition, retention, and monetization
• Enrich customer experience
• New data collection stream
Which industries have jumped into the metaverse?
• Education
• Fashion & Cosmetics
• Sports
• Music
• Art
• FMCG
• Retail
• Automotive
• Tourism
• Real Estate
• TV & Film
What do consumers want to do in Metaverse?
Source: Newzoo
Closing Thoughts
Be it arranging a meeting with a client or work training, businesses can greatly benefit from Metaverse. The technology’s ability to change the way businesses are done and the customer experience is enabled is undeniable. Now is the time for businesses to list the outcomes, opportunities and challenges the Metaverse entails and invest thoughtfully in Metaverse. The digital footprints are easy to track in the social metaverse, which means everything from the user’s real-world identity, and other sensitive information, such as location, shopping preferences, and even financial details can be tracked. Privacy plays a very crucial role in shaping Metaverse and unless it is considered the sustainability of the concept is questionable. Therefore, the risk of Metaverse harassment needs to be addressed. Many consider Metaverse to soon become a widespread reality. The benefits outweigh the risks and the fact that the concept is persistent, self-sustaining, and real-time can make it worth investing in.
Does Metaverse pique your interest? Would you like to take your business to the Metaverse? How about enabling a virtual experience for your customers? Connect with our experts to know more about it!
