Imagine a virtual world where people live, work, shop and interact with friends. The metaverse, which we can describe as the next evolution of the internet, makes it possible for us to do all these while sitting on our sofa in our living room.
Metaverse is not a new concept, but it must be admitted that Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of Facebook’s decision to change its name to Meta was in a way a turning point in this business. Because Facebook’s decision was not just a name change. Zuckerberg also announced that he plans to spend $10 billion over the next year on these technologies to create his vision for the metaverse. Here, with the rapid development of technology, discover everything about the metaverse, which has become an important part of our lives in recent years and has become one of the most important investment tools of brands and companies!
What is Metaverse?
The concept of metaverse first appears in the 1992 novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Although the novel reveals a more dystopian view of the future, it did not shed a positive light on the metaverse. Author Neal Stephenson envisioned the term metaverse as a kind of next-generation virtual reality-based internet. The way to achieve status in Stephenson’s metaverse was technical skill, represented by the complexity of a user’s avatar. Another indicator of status was the ability to access some restricted environments. It is actually possible to see this as a precursor to the paywalls and registration requirements some websites use today.
Ready Player One, written by Ernest Cline, was another novel that helped popularize the idea of the metaverse. It was later brought to the big screen by Steven Spielberg. The 2011 dystopian sci-fi novel is set in the year 2045, when people escape the problems plaguing the world on a virtual planet called The Oasis. Users access the world using a virtual reality viewfinder and tactile gloves that allow them to capture and touch objects in the digital environment. Beyond the works of cinema and literature, some technology companies have developed online communities based on this concept, especially Second Life, which was released in 2003, has come to the fore in this regard.
A Decentralized Universe Bringing the Entire Digital Ecosystem Together
At the point where technology has reached today, there are hundreds of thousands of online worlds such as games, shopping platforms, information and communication platforms that are independent of each other. Moreover, we witness that many innovative technologies such as blockchain, NFT, virtual reality and augmented reality, each of which are revolutionary in their own field, are becoming more and more widespread. At this point, you can think of the concept of metaverse as a decentralized online universe that gathers, covers and combines all these digital worlds in one place.
According to a more technical definition, Metaverse is the realization of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) augmented reality projects using a blockchain system. The digital assets you acquire in this universe are recorded with the blockchain system. In this way, the digital assets of everyone using the metaverse are protected and made unique. Asset trading is also done through digital currencies called metaavserse coins. Thus, ownership and copyright problems are eliminated thanks to NFT (Non Fungible Token), that is, Immutable Tokens.
Avatars will be as popular as profile pictures in the near future
In the Metaverse, people use avatars to represent themselves, communicate with each other, and virtually be part of a community. In the metadatabase, they dress up their avatars using metaverse coins, for example, they buy various equipment to use in a video game. Moreover, users can also travel for entertainment purposes in the metadatabase with virtual reality tools. Zuckerberg predicts: “Avatars will be as common as profile pictures today, but instead of a static image, they will be a 3D format of you, your expressions, your movements. It will be your virtual wardrobe for different applications and experiences.”
Differences Between Internet and Metaverse
The Internet is a network of billions of computers, millions of servers and other electronic devices. When Internet users are online, they can communicate with each other, view and interact with websites, and buy and sell goods/services.
Metaverse, on the other hand, is built on the internet. In the metadatabase, users navigate in a virtual world that mimics the properties of the physical world using virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence, social media and metaverse coin technologies. The Internet is something people “scan”. Metaverse, on the other hand, is in a sense the next step of the work, that is, it is a virtual universe where people live.
Metaverse World in Numbers
Interest in the Metaverse isn’t just from the world of tech companies. According to research, the percentage of active metaverse users has increased by nearly 10 times between the beginning of 2020 and June 2021. The industry is independent, the number one agenda of all brands and agencies lately is metaverse. How well it is understood is debatable, time will tell. As a result of this interest, we can say that land investments in the metaverse world have gained a great momentum all over the world recently. According to a recent study published by MetaMetric Solutions, land sales on the four major metaverse platforms have reached $501 million in 2021. Research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that the global metaverse market will reach approximately $42 billion by 2026. Another report published by Grayscale in November reveals that the total value of the industry will reach trillions of dollars in the coming years. A report served by Gartner expects that by 2026, 25 percent of people will spend at least an hour on the metaverse for education, work, shopping, social media and entertainment. According to the same report, it is predicted that 30 percent of the world’s institutions will have products and services on Metaverse by 2026.
What Opportunities Does It Bring With It For Brands?
Brands all over the world want to take part in the mretaverse, and they see this new universe as a great opportunity, especially for the experiences they will give to the Z and Y generations. When we look at the developments in the global market, brands such as Gucci, Adidas, Under Armor, Nike, Samsung, Nvidia quickly started to appear in the Metaverse.
There are great opportunities waiting for brands in Metaverse. By building experience areas, they can create NFT collections, organize various events by creating campaigns with virtual influencers. When they move forward with the right strategy and agency to seize these opportunities, they will make a big difference on a category basis. It is possible to summarize the opportunities that Metaverse will bring to brands under three headings:
- Accessibility: Metaverse first of all provides digital accessibility to brands and their products in this world. In the near future, millions of people will spend more to dress their online identities, to travel, to provide conditions where they can do whatever can be done in the physical world.
- Exclusivity: Garments and shoes produced in small numbers and sold in NFT format bring privilege to buyers.
- Interaction: Thanks to the metaverse, brands have the opportunity to enter the world of the new generation, where they try to touch their lives in some way.
For the last 10 years, many technologies that have been included in our lives have been described as coming out of science fiction movies, but the metaverse definitely opens the doors of a world where this expression fits perfectly. Although both individuals and brands now look at the metaverse just as they looked at the internet in the 1990s, it would not be pretentious to say that soon everyone will be the new normal in digital.
