The evolution of the Metaverse offers organizations endless opportunities to engage with customers, develop brands, and improve communications in the workplace. While this is undoubtedly an exciting time, businesses can face many challenges when using this technology. We have prepared a series of articles to illustrate the key factors that businesses should consider.
The evolution of the Metaverse offers organizations endless opportunities to engage with customers, develop brands, and improve communications in the workplace. While this is undoubtedly an exciting time, businesses can face many challenges when using this technology. We have prepared a series of articles to illustrate the key factors that businesses should consider. This first article focuses on perhaps the most frequently asked questions – what is the Metaverse? Stay tuned for the next article in this series, which will cover NFTs, brand considerations in virtual worlds, intellectual property protection, and the use of virtual worlds in the workplace.
“Metaverse” has become such a buzzword lately that it’s easy to believe it was prompted by Facebook’s rebranding of Meta. However, the term is not new and actually first appeared in the 1992 science fiction novel Avalanche. The notion that the characters in the novel create avatars and communicate with each other in virtual worlds is the essence of the Metaverse to this day. In the 1990s and 2000s, computer games became more widespread, allowing users to live a second life through their avatars in virtual worlds, which can now be used to purchase virtual objects, territories, and even advertising space.
The Metaverse is a generic term for a set of technologies that help create the Digital Universe. Metaverse is used in a wide variety of contexts such as PC gaming, social media platforms, virtual conferences and events. For example, Microsoft’s new project “Microsoft Mesh” is integrating virtual reality and augmented reality into its Microsoft Teams platform. In addition, its use is growing at a seemingly exponential rate. For example, healthcare providers are looking at how it can be used to provide virtual therapy and remote surgeries, while the public sector is exploring how it can best be used to provide virtual consultations and government services.
The Metaverse is still growing and evolving, it is not yet a single coherent concept supported by only one technology. While Meta is at the forefront of organizations seeking to create complete virtual worlds, most agree that we are still many years away from having virtual worlds become a single immersive space. Meta itself admitted that we are probably 10 to 15 years away from this stage. So, in the current state of affairs, several virtual worlds describe themselves as “metaverses”, and will continue to do so until disparate technologies converge or until one platform begins to dominate.
In order to join this virtual world and be able to interact with other people, people need to create an avatar, which is their digital representation in the metaverse. Avatars are important precursors to participation in the Metaverse. The technology behind this may vary, and the themes and worlds of a particular part of the Metaverse depend on its provider. This digital identification is platform dependent but may include personal photographs or 2D or 3D models. Users can customize the look of their avatars by changing their height, weight, skin tone, hairstyle, and accessories. Check out Part 5 of this series, which discusses employment issues related to the use of avatars.
The idea is that each person has only one avatar in the metaverse. This is definitely the Meta’s vision for the future – the intention is for the avatar to be the user’s identity throughout the Metaverse, with easy access to all the different worlds available. However, some avatars are currently limited to one platform, so multiple avatars are used.
An important feature of the Metaverse is the presence of its own economy. This has real value and relevance to the real world economy.
The Metaverse remains a mystery to many, but the events of the last year or so show the importance of understanding and using this technology. In this series, our goal is to clarify some of the key points for businesses looking to use the Metaverse.
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Post time: Feb-10-2023