One of the most innovative ideas to gain momentum is the concept of the metaverse. For marketers, it’s critical to understand what the metaverse is and how it will impact the way brands promote their products and services.
What is the metaverse?
Think about science fiction movies from the early- to mid-20th century. In those films, they depicted the future of floating cities with millions of flying cars zipping around (for those that can’t afford teleportation, of course). Some aspects of these films came true, such as robots depicted in the 1927 film Metropolis or video calls shown in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of course, much of today’s technology looks very different from those early predictions. The same can be said about the metaverse.
Although there has been talk over the past decade about the creation of a metaverse, most people are still unclear about what the metaverse is. Part of the challenge in defining the metaverse is that it’s still very early in the stages of development. The reality is that we don’t know how the metaverse will look in the future. The metaverse is truly at a point where science fiction is beginning to meet reality.
Much of the promotional metaverse content we see now is aspirational and doesn’t represent what can be done with today’s technology. What’s exciting is that the future is unknown.
The metaverse and Web 3.0
Although the metaverse will be a significant innovation in this century, its development is not an isolated event. The development of the metaverse is just one part of a much bigger transformation of digital technology. It’s difficult to imagine a metaverse built on top of our existing infrastructure. For this reason, many companies are shifting their focus to the creation and adoption of a third iteration of the internet (named Web3 or Web 3.0).
For marketers, it’s important to understand the technology that is being envisioned for Web 3.0, as many of these innovations will be incorporated into and power the metaverse. The first version of the internet (Web 1.0) was focused on simple protocols that could be used to share and deliver information. Web 2.0 took this a step further, with the focus being on user-created content (email, blogs, video content) and peer-to-peer interactions (social media). The evolution to Web 3.0 will transition the internet to a trustless and permissionless version of the internet, meaning that people will have more control over their data and use of the internet.
