I recently learned that “metaverse” was not a term that most people have been getting familiar with over the past year or two. Maybe that’s a testament to the silos that our curated social media feeds create. I thought I had done a good job making mine something that tapped into many topics but was not extensively one industry, ideology, or style of content. It’s harder than it looks.
But, we’re here. Faceb- Meta just pushed the term into the mainstream. To my surprise, people are confused. How could this be new? I don’t think it is. To be honest, while I think the term is somewhat novel, and downright goofy when Zuck says it, its path is easy to understand. Along with the announcement, this article kicked it off for me.
We’re already halfway there. We exist in an omni-channel universe. We have physical lives and digital avatars. We have relationships for professional reputations and Xbox-live rankings for video game reputations.
Elon Musk stated years ago that we’re already half cyborg. We float between a world where we see, produce, and engage with physical goods every day. We also see, produce, and engage with digital goods every day. A single tweet can be itemized in the same way as a single coffee from Starbucks. Our world is already part, if not majority, meta.
We have print ads and physical goods. We’re walking billboards for Nike and Apple. We have digital ads and digital goods. Our social media bios and PFPs can be billboards for DAOs and NFTs (some background here).
Posters are taken. Digital timelines are taken. What’s left, you ask?
The next best thing for technology to expand into is the very air that’s in-between our physical reality. When you put on the Oculus, for example, the physical boundaries of whatever game you play is limited to the walls that you exist within. But with the headset on, the airspace within those four walls is infinite.
That airspace can be specific to you, too. Today, you walk down Bedford Ave in Williamsburg and see brands whose wheatpaste posters are guessing that the people in the neighborhood relate with them.
They have data and insights but it is not curated specific to you. Looking ahead, there is no guessing. When your avatar walks through a specific location in the Sandbox, the naming rights on a digital building can change between you and your best friend. In theory, this means no wasted impressions. No bloat. This is just one application on the advertising front of this new world. There are many layers here of which I’ll attempt to expand upon in the future. For now, I’ll stay here with my tin foil hat.
This is scary to some, and on many levels, that is rightfully so. However, I would recommend doing some of your own research and listening – a lot – to people in the space before attaching yourself too strongly to early rebuttals that come to mind. An open mindset is key. I’m learning every day, and a few exceptional resources I’ve found are listed below.
- Chris Dixon (Tim Ferriss Show)
- NIA Podcast (Come for the memes, stay for the content)
- Matthew ball (Website / Leading documentarian for and expert in the space)
I hope you enjoy the ideas. It’s all so ambiguous right now that the directions it can take are seemingly endless. We’re heading towards a crazy place, and to paraphrase Jan Blachowicz, “the final pages in this story are yet to be written.”