Is the metaverse really an opportunity for businesses?
The metaverse promises to be many things, and all of them revolutionary. To date, however, it almost does not exist. The article by the economist Paolo Passaro taken from the quarterly magazine Startmag
In his book The Metaverse. And How it Will Revolutionize Everything Matthew Ball, one of the leading experts in the field, expresses one of the most interesting definitions of metaverse. Ball writes: “The metaverse will be a global-scale, interoperable network of instantaneously created three-dimensional virtual worlds to be experienced synchronously and continuously by an unlimited number of people, each with a sense of digital presence and continuity of identity data. , history, benefits, communications and payments maintained across the entire network.”
This complex definition, already in its merely syntactic expression, describes and defines a reality that is still very far from the current one. Apart from the title, there is nothing else today that truly represents, not even "in nuce", a metaverse.
FASHION AND GAMING, THE FIRST EXPERIENCES
A first small step forward are realities like Decentraland and Roblox. Decentraland presents itself as a three-dimensional space where fans and brands can purchase land, using cryptocurrency from the Ethereum platform, interact and create events and experiences. In March 2022 Decentraland hosted the first Fashion Week ever with many fashion brands intent on holding fashion shows, parties, concerts and seminars. It is still a niche application (around 200,000 users ) but it is proposed as a true experiment in interconnection between people and between people and brands, with participation in unique events (post-show parties).
A new revolutionary way of conceiving fashion and shopping that will profoundly change the way we relate to these aspects of existence. Roblox was created by the American company Roblox Corporation in 2006 in the gaming sector and has over 50 million active users per day and over 230 million per month. Mostly very young. The Roblox platform is as far from the metaverse as it will be in the definition we mentioned at the beginning. But it has some features in common: fans create their worlds and games together, sell their digital creations to the community, play together, interact with their favorite brands. The Nike brand created Nikeland on Roblox, as a game and the young generations' first approach to the famous brand of sports shoes and clothing.
Apart from these initial technological curiosities that open our gaze towards a future of novelties, in many ways overwhelming, the metaverse is far from being a useful and inclusive reality, today, for the majority of society. Mainly due to technological, bandwidth capacity and interoperability limitations. Regardless of any technological revolution, the fundamental questions for acquiring market shares are always the same: how to get new customers and how to retain them. Currently, the metaverse is not the blue ocean where you can cast your nets and fill them with fish beyond belief. There is no ocean in the metaverse but just small lakes. There is no platform on which to scale. To give an example, the platform "The Sandbox", based on blockchain and considered a "metaverse" has around 21 thousand owners, a pittance for the numbers of social networks and the global internet.
A LONG-TERM INNOVATION
Despite this, the metaverse remains well positioned as a long-term innovation. Considering the myriad of consumer- and enterprise-focused use cases (that the metaverse could satisfy), a report from McKinsey & Company highlights the technology's potential to generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030. For the metaverse reach its full potential, the report highlights the need for four technological enablers: AR/VR devices, haptic (tactile) sensors and peripherals, interoperability and open standards, enabling platforms and development tools. However, the success of the metaverse is conditioned by a greater focus on optimizing the user experience, aimed at providing positive sensations for consumers and end users in general.
McKinsey & Company's report states that "the metaverse is simply too big to ignore", and highlights the impact it can have on commerce and daily life. McKinsey estimates that over 50% of live events could take place in the metaverse by 2030. From this data we develop the above estimate of a generateable value of over 5 trillion dollars.
Outside of the "Alpha generation", which are the kids who currently have from zero to around 9 years old and who in 10-15 years will represent the true users of the metaverse, for all the others the question arises: what will actually be possible see, experience, work, play with the metaverse?
AN EXPONENTIAL ACCELERATOR OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE
The first thing that experts maintain is that the metaverse can never replace the realism of the physical world. Physicality will remain the essential element for building trust and promoting social capital, both individually and as a community. The metaverse is an exponential accelerator of the physical universe. A company will be able to test a product in digital format, for example the design of a new shoe, and then modify the final product based on suggestions from the public, before producing the shoe itself. Same for any other product from cars to clothes.
The metaverse increases and does not replace seeing, touching and experiencing objects and services in person. Spending for the public, especially millennials, migrates from objects to experiences. We are returning from electronic commerce to "tactile" commerce, augmented and virtual reality. Meta is building a network of stores to offer AR (augmented reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) devices to those who want to look out and enter its metaverse. Physical locations will offer customers the combination of location and technology to expand the ability to create value and enhance any human experience. The mixture of advanced technologies and virtual reality (which also includes augmented reality) will make the digital world an alternative and complement to the physical world with excellent realism. The concept of remote working will be overcome because technology will allow company employees and professionals to interact with the avatars of their interlocutors and to brainstorm and exchange ideas with an approximation very close to reality.
The metaverse will enable a new and immersive, realistic shopping experience for fashion, luxury products and art. The metaverse, however, will be a supplement to localization and not its replacement. It will reduce switching costs from one location to another and transaction costs with an increase in the speed of decision-making and personalization based on data. This will be combined with a different financial approach using cryptocurrencies. We are therefore at a crucial step in human evolution which with technology will be able to increase its potential exponentially but without losing its humanity which is the basis of all processes.
Of course there may be some surprises. According to a recent survey conducted by Dating.com, an online dating platform, “with advances in dating app technology and the metaverse, more and more people are open to making connections that span different cities, countries, and even continents” . On this last point, healthy skepticism is appropriate. It may be intriguing to meet the avatar of a potential partner who lives on the other side of the world, but it will remain an experience not comparable to the classic aperitif with real friends in one of the magnificent bars that dot the villages or cities of Italy.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/metaverso-passaro/ on Tue, 26 Dec 2023 06:58:48 +0000.