In the next blog in our series cutting through the metaverse noise, we’re taking a break from our regular schedule to share CX & Technology Analyst, Mark Hillary’s viewpoint on the metaverse, before we conclude with our final blog of the series next week.
What is the reality of the metaverse today? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg believes that it will shape our online lives so profoundly that he changed the name of his entire company to Meta. But if you spend some time on Google then it’s very hard to find any real case studies of companies that are already engaging with customers in a metaverse environment.
There are platforms out there, such as Sandbox and Decentraland, but it’s hard to find a travel agency demonstrating suites in expensive resorts or a department store demonstrating products.
There is a good reason. If the metaverse were physical then it would look like a construction site at present. There are so many decisions still being taken about how it will function and what equipment is required that it’s still too early to find solid enterprise use cases.
Jon Radoff, author of the Building the Metaverse blog, has detailed almost 200 companies that are actively building the metaverse at present. He has divided them up into several different groups:
- Infrastructure– Connectivity technologies like 5G, Wi-Fi, cloud, and hi-tech materials like GPUs.
- Human interface– VR headsets, AR glasses, haptics, and other technologies users will leverage to join the metaverse.
- Decentralization– Blockchain, artificial intelligence, edge computing, and other tools of democratisation.
- Spatial computing– 3D visualisation and modelling frameworks
- Creator economy– An assortment of design tools, digital assets, and e-commerce establishments
- Discovery– The content engine driving engagement, including ads, social media, ratings, reviews, etc.
- Experiences– VR equivalents of digital apps for gaming, events, work, shopping, etc.
So when trying to establish what is really taking place in the metaverse, beyond all the media speculation, it is really important to ask three foundational questions:
- Who is now developing what we will think of in the metaverse?
- What is feasible or possible based on what we can predict now?
- What do we already have for the future to evolve from?
Matthew Ball’s 2022 book ‘The Metaverse and how it will Revolutionize Everything’ is a good source of ideas about the future of the metaverse. Ball was the head of strategy at Amazon Studios and now heads an investment firm called Epyllion. His book summarizes the foundation of the metaverse and it predicts where we may be heading in the near future.
Ball’s prediction is that education will be the first area to see a major change from the metaverse because remote education has been extensively tested throughout the pandemic and the metaverse adds the sense of presence that was missing from endless lectures on Zoom. He could be right. It’s an industry that can easily be disrupted by new ideas, but the truth is that analysts and experts have been talking about innovation in education for decades and the universities and schools somehow resist change. In 2003, Gary Hamel’s book ‘Leading The Revolution’ focused on how various industries will explore innovation and one of his leading predictions was that education would soon be using online lectures to allow professors to teach thousands of students simultaneously.
What we can see at present is that much of the metaverse development and innovation is coming from gaming companies. Epic, Niantic, Roblox, and (naturally) Meta are all leading the way. These are gaming or social media companies that have already created metaverse-like environments in the past with games such as Fortnite and Pokémon GO.
As Meta has made clear in their public statements, the metaverse is a decentralized concept of how people will interact using the Internet in future. It’s not software or a standard, that can be controlled by any single company. In the same way that the public cycled through various social media tools before settling on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram as favorites, we are likely to also see metaverse winners and losers in the near future.
The gaming companies have the experience of creating early metaverse environments so it feels natural for them to be leading at present, but this may all change. After all, who now remembers Bebo, Friendster, or Orkut?
In our last and final blog in the series, we’ll look in more detail at the people skills you’ll need in your wider CX team in the metaverse. In the meantime, you can find out more about our Metaverse solutions, or talk to us about any aspect of the metaverse by reaching out below.
