Forget catchy buzzwords and clickbait features on Facebook and Instagram – the Metaverse is a whole new idea, with the potential to be as transformative as the internet was back in 1992.
You have been asked about the meaning of the Metaverse with regard to social media. Computer media such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), Blockchain technology and 3D modelling are the items causing the change.
Overall, this essay will talk about what it could mean for people who use social media.
Firstly, the author thinks that this computer-based platform can be a way to help people who use it get sick of the fact that some users don’t get along with each other. For example, two people who like the same social media platform but not each other could always start an argument if they were in the same place. However, if they could be in the same environment, it could make them stop feeling so rivalrous, which would be positive for the users and the app in question.
Another benefit of social media is that it can be seen as a virtual world where we can meet new people. This is because we can find information we are interested in and meet new followers.
To conclude, social media has both positive and negatives. For instance, people can meet new people or they could have conflicts with them. Clearly, social media is showing interesting possibilities as technology advances.
What is the Metaverse?
An online world filled with synthetic simulation that enables users to interact in real time – in immersive and ‘lifelike’ ways – with the help of virtual reality headsets, AR glasses, and even apps on smartphones is known as the Metaverse. These are going to offer humans a social experience that’s far more exciting, and will refresh people’s view of virtuality as being more than just mere text and video.
Users will have access to the best of the real world, regardless of cost, distance or access, including biotech labs. A person who lives in a rural area and is reading about a scientific experiment in the Metaverse might have just as good access to it as someone living in a university that has a suite of biotech labs on campus.
This will be especially attractive to businesses, whose target markets are opening up on social media to engage in brands in new ways, create rich and interactive brand experiences with global reach, and more easily build a direct dialogue with Generation Hashtag, creating deeper connection and loyalty, while gaining widespread brand mentions.
What will the Metaverse look like?
While the Metaverse itself still appears distant on the horizon for most of us, there are positive signs that its arrival is sooner than it first seemed. VR headsets are becoming more commonplace and there are efforts to make it easier to create or share content.
Another tool for crafting metaverses is Unity, a well-known video game engine that was acquired by Qualcomm in 2019. In 2018, Meta acquired Horizon Worlds, a metaverse specifically built with Unity, which makes it fairly easy for anyone who knows how to make video games to craft and even sell products in the Metaverse.
Augmented and virtual reality experiences, meanwhile, are making the Metaverse a more immersive environment, through headsets or gloves that offer a mixed physical-virtual experience. The royalty-free OpenXR standard from The Khronos Group ensures metaverse experiences across the hardware.
How will the Metaverse change social media?
In the metaverse, users would be able to manipulate digital objects and people in a more immersive and realistic manner – leading to novel forms of socialisation and material creation.
With friends, start a round of beat ’em up. Go to a 3D webinar with coworkers. Catch up with your long-distance friends in a virtual city: virtual reality headset, glasses and smartphone apps are the portals through which you can enter the Metaverse.
Business will be able to use the Metaverse to have a conversation with you on a more personal level. They could send you discounts or give you rewards for behaving in certain ways, and use knowledge about you to help them tailor the ads that they show you, and create virtual experiences such as watching a virtual concert or taking part in an immersive event. Businesses may even be able to use the Metaverse as a place where employees train – since the virtual space is so realistic one could even place employees in hazardous situations and provide training for those situations in a safe environment, ensuring that the employees are less likely to make expensive mistakes in the real world.
What will the Metaverse mean for businesses?
Yet, marketers need to crystalise a true concept of the Metaverse, and the impact on social media. Here’s where it gets particularly confusing as the term seems to be conflated with everything from gaming platforms, blockchain and NFTs to VR/AR technologies; this leads to a real risk of muddling our collective ability to define what each phenomenon actually is – these different concepts can also impact consumers differently in sentiment and adoption, and marketers need to put approaches to each on its own pedestal equally.
Businesses in virtual environments such as the Metaverse have opportunities to engage people in new and convenient ways, demonstrating products and services that cannot be limited by physical places or spaces (for example, via product demonstrations, interactive tutorials or virtual showrooms).
Through the Metaverse, companies can train their employees to a higher level by utilising VR for surgeons who might rehearse an operation before doing it on a real patient, or forklift drivers who can simulate dangerous situations in a safe environment to train and avoid real-life consequences by learning from their mistakes while being in a VR environment.