My Wokingham has produced a special report about the Metaverse aimed at both consumers and small businesses we aim to learn about the Metaverse and if this will have an impact on consumers and businesses
The metaverse has the potential to touch a wide range of industries—from gaming and sports, through retail and fashion, to travel, financial services and advertising—but it’s far from being fully formed. An understanding of why and how people will use it will be vital for brands looking to create an advantage for themselves.
Awareness and understanding of the metaverse
In a survey by YouGuv more than half of consumers in the UK (57%) and the US (52%) have heard of the metaverse. In both the US & UK, younger generations are more likely than older generations to indicate an awareness of the Metaverse, presumably due to greater interests in and involvement with technology, social media and gaming.
In the metaverse, people use avatars to represent themselves, communicate with each other and virtually build out the community. In the metaverse, digital currency is used to buy clothes — or weapons and shielding in the case of video games — and many other items. Users can also virtually travel through the metaverse for fun with no goal in mind using a virtual reality headset and controllers.
BBC News explains What Is The Metaverse
With the metaverse still in the early stages of its development, what do people think it actually is?
YouGuv asked people about their ideas of the metaverse and the highest proportion of metaverse-aware consumers in both the UK (29%) and US (24%) envision it to closely resemble a ‘virtual reality experience.’ The second most popular descriptor of the metaverse is that it resembles a video game (UK: 14%; US: 13%), followed by conceptions that it is a social media platform (UK: 5%; US: 9%) or a virtual meeting room (UK: 5%; US: 7%).
We also surveyed the broader conceptions that people associate with the metaverse and the data shows metaverse-aware consumers see a strong tie to Facebook (UK: 43%; US: 33%).
What do consumers think of the metaverse?
Which, if any, of the following reflects your understanding of what the metaverse is? (% of adults in each market who are aware of the metaverse)
What is the difference between the internet and the metaverse?
The internet is a network of billions of computers, millions of servers and other electronic devices. Once online, internet users can communicate with each other, view and interact with websites, and buy and sell goods and services.
The metaverse doesn’t compete with the internet — it builds on it. In the metaverse, users traverse a virtual world that mimics aspects of the physical world using such technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), AI, social media and digital currency. The internet is something that people “browse.” But, to a degree, people can “live” in the metaverse.
It’s been nearly six months since Facebook announced it was rebranding to Meta and would focus its future on the upcoming “metaverse.” In the time since, what that term means hasn’t gotten any clearer. Meta is building a VR social platform, Roblox is facilitating user-generated video games, and some companies are offering up little more than broken game worlds that happen to have NFTs attached.
Advocates from niche startups to tech giants have argued that this lack of coherence is because the metaverse is still being built, and it’s too new to define what it means. The internet existed in the 1970s, for example, but not every idea of what that would eventually look like was true.
There is a lot of excitement around metaverse, driven by technology companies preemptively claiming to be metaverse companies or creating a metaverse to enhance or augment the digital and physical realities of people.
Eventually, metaverse will provide persistent, decentralized, collaborative and interoperable opportunities and business models that will enable organizations to extend digital business. But metaverse opportunities are already emerging — for enterprises as well as individuals. For example:
- J.P. Morgan has become the first bank to establish a presence in the metaverse, predicting a market opportunity of $1 trillion and eyeing virtual real estate.
Is the Metaverse important for local businesses?
The metaverse potentially offers small businesses a way to reach new markets and customers that they wouldn’t be able to reach in the physical world. Small businesses can create their own virtual spaces and use them to promote their products and services. They can also use avatars (virtual representations of themselves) to interact with potential customers in a way that is not possible in the physical world.
Will the Metaverse make work better?
Take the world of work. Hybrid working feels nearly normal to many of us now. Will the metaverse offer us the chance to keep the benefits we love – think less commutes and more lunchtime runs – while making our online interactions feel more ‘real’? Could we soon be gathered in a virtual meeting room, high-fiving avatars of our colleagues?
Facebook and the Metaverse
Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously defined the metaverse as not a place at all, virtual or otherwise, but a time.
“One definition of this [the metaverse] is it’s about a time when basically immersive digital worlds become the primary way that we live our lives and spend our time,”
he said in a February 2022 interview.
Despite Facebook rebranding in Oct. 2021 to Meta Platforms Inc., or just Meta for short, Meta isn’t the entire metaverse, just like Facebook isn’t the entire internet
Remember, “internet” didn’t mean much at first either, and eventually people settled on a universal understanding of the term. Over time the same will happen with metaverse
Useful Resources