.png)
The world of advertising has always been extremely competitive, and tricky to say the least. Social media is at the forefront for driving digital marketing to all new extremes with its success of being able to sustain such a business model. And with Facebook owning more than ⅔ of the social media scene with its ownership of both Instagram and WhatsApp. Two of the most used social media services aside from Facebook. It starts to become apparent why it's treated like such a big deal when such a company changes its name and announces its next new vision of "social media"
The Metaverse:
The "Metaverse" is something that Mark Zuckerberg likes to call it as explains it as his vision towards the next phase of social media. In essence, he plans to create a Digital reality that allows us to express ourselves via 3d avatars that represent us.
This 3d Avatar can be whatever we like. by using this Avatar we can interact with other people also who are using their Avatar as well. But how u say? the virtual reality of course! VR technology has been in development for over a decade and finally got to a point where it's slowly becoming mainstream. Facebook acquired Oculus back in 2014, Oculus being one of the popular companies that make VR Headsets. Meta's vision is that you can experience whichever fantasy you ever wanted with the help of virtual reality! Ever wanted to hang out with friends in a random place on earth? Or maybe play video games with utmost realism or maybe even play chess with random strangers on the streets of New York? Meta's vision is to make this a reality with the help of VR tech.
Steps towards this new future:
Mark Zuckerberg’s primary goal currently is to enable a larger portion of the available market to be able to get into VR by subsidizing the cost of their flagship Vr goggles. By doing this people will be able to purchase this new tech without being scrutinized by their wallets. Mark Zuckerberg expects around another 10 years of development for the full feature set to become mainstream.
Adverts, NFT’s and businesses around it:
NFT or what Wikipedia likes to define it as “a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger. In its most basic of definitions, it is a way to identify a digital asset on the internet. We all know how much Companies love Facebook as it allows them to advertise their products on it. So it’s only logical to assume said companies also want to hop onto this bandwagon that meta is trying to create. Other than the new form of advertisements we have to deal with. A possible new market will also open up which meta likes to call as “horizon marketplace” Where people can make digital goods or NFT’s and sell them to willing buyers for their avatars in this new marketplace.
Can we join the Metaverse today?
It’s hard to imagine this sort of reality without at least experiencing a taste of it ourselves. Thankfully there are implementations of this experience already available. It’s called VR chat where people can hang out in public chat rooms where they appear as their chosen avatars. We can’t give all the credit to meta as this existed way before meta brought this concept into the mainstream spotlight. VR Games as a whole can give you a taste of its potential if you do happen to have a 600 dollar VR headset lying around with you!
A Certain Reality we must understand:
While this entire concept of having this new experience living in a digital space seems enticing enough. This has many ethical downsides as well as people becoming more disconnected from reality. Facebook or meta at the end of the day is still a business and a highly profitable one at that. Its primary objective will always be trying to keep you on its platform the longest, so we need to understand this and limit the amount of control we give these companies. The metaverse is inevitable, meta was just the first one to make it big enough for people to care about it.
The Key takeaway!
The metaverse is a very rough vision of the next generation of the internet we need to be prepared for it. The Social and Financial implications of Such a new market need to be discussed more and we need to also accept that we are moving towards a potentially more volatile and different reality.
--- Sai Charan