Into The Metaverse: A Sneak Peek Into The Future Of Everything!

You've probably heard a lot about the concept of a digital universe in the last few months, and the reason you’ve heard so much about it is because of Facebook's October 2021 announcement, in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased the company's next vision towards investing billions of dollars over the years to come into this space. He even declared back then that to focus on this vision of the future, the company is changing its name to Meta.

Yes, we are talking about the “Metaverse”. The word "Metaverse" is a combination of "Meta" (meaning "beyond" or "transformative" as in the word meta-morphosis) and "verse" from the word "uni-verse". A basic understanding is that the metaverse consists of an infinite number of digitally connected habitats populated by avatars of real people, who work, play, and socialize together.

People will be able to access the Metaverse whenever they want and wherever they are, thanks to emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), spatial computing, 5G, and Blockchain.???????

So why is there so much hype around the metaverse and why are people and brands investing millions of dollars into it?

To understand the potential that the Metaverse holds in the near as well as the distant future, we need to take a journey back into the not-so-distant past, around the time the Internet was introduced to the masses.

In the past, Web 1.0 introduced us to the internet and a world of connected information. Jump to the present, Web 2.0 enhanced the internet and introduced us to a world of connected people, or in other words, the social media network as we know it today. The future, Web 3.0 will introduce us to a world that connects people, places, things, and experiences.

In short, the Metaverse is not just a particular technology or platform, it is going to be an immersive and interactive experience comprising of a combination/ a confluence of multiple platforms and technologies as mentioned above, along with trends (sports, gaming, entertainment, fashion, commerce, etc) and user behaviour (social interaction, content creation, collaboration, etc) all set in a Phygital environment on a secure, decentralized blockchain platform.?

In other words, the Metaverse is going to be an immersive, interactive, and decentralized form of the internet as we know it today that will be accessible to all and not controlled by a few big tech companies.

The Seven Layers Of The Metaverse

In his article about The Metaverse Value-Chain, Jon Radoff provides a description of the value chain of this market, from the experiences that people seek out to the enabling technologies that make it possible, and shares a vision for a future metaverse that is powered by creators and built upon decentralization.

The image shown above gives an overview of the building blocks of the Metaverse. Source: Gartner

To help you get a better perspective of the metaverse and its potential, I recommend watching movies such as “The Matrix” or “Ready Player One”.

If movies are not your thing and you want to experience the Metaverse in action, I recommend you try out “Rec Room”, which recently hit 3 million monthly active users.

You see, for a universe that doesn’t exist yet, at least as demonstrated by Hollywood movies and Meta, the metaverse is surprisingly real.

In its full glory, the metaverse will introduce full-fledged virtual economies, complete with property ownership, offices spaces, travel destinations, social events, and so much more.

According to various industry reports, the Metaverse economy could be an $8 trillion to $13 trillion total addressable market by 2030.

Today’s organizations/businesses, especially brands that see customer experiences as a huge competitive advantage, should consider exploring the metaverse and the possibilities it can deliver. Recently, Sony and Lego signalled their interest in the metaverse by investing $2 billion into Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite and Unreal Engine.

Organizations and brands globally are already making inroads in building Metaverse experiences for their audiences across the ecosystems. The images below show the various companies already investing across the Metaverse ecosystem; be it building the foundation and tools of the Metaverse or the experiences.

With so much being said and shared about the Metaverse, and Billions of Dollars getting invested in this domain globally, what's your take about the Metaverse? According to you, what's the timeline by when the Metaverse will have mass-market adoption and which are the industries / use-cases that you see leading the same?

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section on the same!