This is Becoming Metaversal
A weekly newsletter about what's happening in the Metaverse, and how brands and businesses can not only survive but thrive in this digital ecosystem.
I’ve never written a newsletter before, but I’ve also never had so many people ask me the same questions so consistently.
“What is the Metaverse?”
“What should we be doing in the Metaverse?”
“Should our business be dropping an NFT?”
“Do we need to be making content for Virtual Reality?”
“What brands are leading in the Metaverse and how do I/we stay relevant?”
The answers to these question, and how people and brands are exploring and progressing in this space is fast evolving. This news will be where I try to answer some of the big questions about what’s happening, what’s changing, and how you can keep up.
The intention is for it to be a weekly newsletter where I share the major events from the week, and provide a bit of a POV on what it all means for you. But before we get started with that, it’s worth taking a bit of time for a recap to discuss The Metaverse at a very high level, what is it, and why does it feel like everyone is rushing in all of sudden.
What is the Metaverse
I think there is a lot of misunderstanding out there right now around this. Like when people were just discovering the internet - a common perception at that time would have been that the internet was limited to being a series of static websites which people could read and browse content. Obviously with, apps, content, social media, etc the internet is now recognized as being so much more. So while people’s initial ideas were not wrong, but they were far from complete.
The same is true of the Metaverse. There is a common perception that it is a Virtual Reality world where people can interact with each other. This is in part because of films like Ready Player One as well as some fairly fantastic product demos and concepts of future worlds that have been circulated. But mostly it’s because people like to think about the engagement channel first. It’s tangible and easy to grasp, but the truth is that it is, just as the first thoughts about the internet, incomplete.
A better way to think about the Metaverse is as the next evolution of digital wherein the real world and the digital worlds are more tightly connected (and yes, I said worlds - plural, but more on that later). Think of it as a digital world that you can interact with. The connections and interactions between the digital and real will exist in 3 principal ways:
Experience - This might be a rich and engaging fully immersive virtual experience or an augmented reality overlay delivered through either glasses or a phone. But it could just as well be on a screen no different from any other today as part of a game or even as part of your daily exercise routine (see Zwift and Capti), or even as experienced delivered through your watch or headphones that are triggered by real-world activities.
Value - What’s important to consider here is the fact that people will put value into digital objects, and that those digital objects will actually have the ability to impart real-world value to everyday objects. The most famous example of this digital asset value can be seen through NFTs with total sales reaching $10.7 billion USD in Q3 2021.
Time - In the dystopian vision of the Metaverse portrayed in both Ready Player One and in Snow Crash, people choose to spend time there as an escape from their real lives. Will that be the reality that comes to bear? It’s hard to know, but what is clear is that we will spend a lot more time connected to digital worlds. In fact, if we think of the connection between the real and digital world as a spectrum, what becomes clear is that we have been spending time in the Metaverse for some time already through the connections our devices provide. The chart below illustrates how different devices have the potential to connect us to the Metaverse at varied levels of immersiveness and over varied periods of time.
Hopefully, that provides a bit of clarity around the question of what is the Metaverse, but for more thoughts on this matter, and given that this is a sort of “catch-up” newsletter, I think it’s worth referencing some of the major announcements and points-of-view that have been released recently:
Facebook changed their name to Meta as an indicative gesture of where they see the future of the business. You can watch the keynote and see everything they had to say about it here.
Microsoft quickly followed suit by announcing their own vision for how the Metaverse will impact the way we work, and how they are building Mesh as the connective tissue that will allow people in different physical spaces to connect and interact virtually.
While Apple has been a bit quieter on this issue, they are definitely not without their own visions and product pipeline for the Metaverse. In fact this past week, more detail broke about their long-rumored AR headset and the potential that it will be released in 2022.
And it’s not just the household name technology brands who are building for The Metaverse.
In an effort to build out more beautiful worlds for the Metaverse, gaming giant Unity recently paid $1.6 billion for Weta Digital - the Visual Effects founded by film director Peter Jackson.
Chip manufacturer NVIDIA has not only been building out the hardware needed to render our vision of the Metaverse, but they have also been busy developing AI models capable of quickly rendering photo-realistic landscapes from simple graphic direction or even text description. To get a glimpse into how this will work check out the amazing demo of GauGAN2 on YouTube.
The list could go on and on. In fact, that’s why I am creating this newsletter: to give all of you one place where you can find all of the latest announcements on how people, businesses, and brands are becoming Metaversal.
Here are a few of my favorite stories, products, and demos that have come out recently.
Brands & Marketing
Nike partnered with SNAP on the development of a new AR running companion that not keeps you motivated through the run but alters the landscape making your run a bit more surreal. I’ve seen a few other brands launch things like this, and while part of me loves it, I do have to ask … how many people run with glasses on? But seriously, don’t worry about that question to much. Watch the demo video here.
Nike partnered with Roblox to launch NikeLand. Built within the Roblox 3D gaming ecosystem it combines online gaming, physical activity, virtual product showrooms to dress up your Avatar and it’s said that the Nike House of Innovation in New York will actually connect the Roblox world with the real world through SNAP.
And based on their patent applications, Nike has been busy in the background making other plans to conquer the Metaverse. Read more here.
Sticking with the theme sports and apparel brands, Adidas hasn’t been sitting on the sidelines. They recently announced a partnership with the crypto exchange Coinbase on Twitter where they have also been teasing at the potential for a partnership with the Metaverse gaming company Sandbox. In addition to this, they recently launched with POAP (proof of attendance protocol) indicating the potential for them to be looking into how NFTs and digital tokens can support their CRM and loyalty efforts.
Time Magazine and Galaxy Digital partner to help bring readers together with creators and innovators in the Metaverse. There was some payment as part of this deal with time receiving payment in ETH which they will now hold on their balance sheet.
US insurance giant State Farm is getting into the game by launching an AR Treasure Hunt where you can win NFTs.
Marketing Agency TBWA created an NFTree in an Australian shopping mall to show the work of some of the Australian NFT creators.
NFTs
NFTs are the topic of the moment. With greater tangibility and a more direct connection to culture, they appear to be taking crypto mainstream. It’s a fast-growing and developing space with some huge numbers attached to it and even bigger potential.
A virtual plot of land sold for the record price of 550 ETH (about $2.4 million) in the Axie Infinity NFT game.
Legal action is being pursued by a number of artists (including Sir Anish Kapoor and David Bailey) whose works were replicated and sold as NFTs (allegedly without their knowledge). The collection has since been taken down, but only after it had generated bout 1600 ETH (a little over $7m) in sales. It’s the first legal case of its kind and it will be the first real test of copyright protection within the Metaverse.
While we are on the subject of the art world, Christie’s has partnered with Opensea for the first-ever on-chain NFT auction. The action will open on December 1st with bidding going from December 4th to the 7th.
But despite all the big dollar figures mentioned above, the NFT space appears to have its share of diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges as it is being reported that female artists have only made 5% of NFT revenues in the past 21 months.
While it feels like I have hardly scratched the surface of the news and what I could be talking about, this newsletter is already starting to feel a bit long. I’ll be working on the format over the next few weeks, trying to get the right balance of opinion vs. links to news, and trying to just keep things at a digestible length.
I am just figuring this out, so please do feedback, comment, and make suggestions if you have any. Or if you want to keep reading more on the subject, here are three great links:
Why Web 3 Matters - A tweetstorm from Chris Dixon that does a great job of explaining his POV as someone sitting inside of one of the most successful Venture Capital Companies.
What is an NFT? - A great tweetstorm from Punk6529 that does a great job of explaining what NFTs are and why they are significant. Doesn’t go far enough into their future potential, but it’s already a lot for one Tweetstorm.
NFTs in 2030 - Another great one from Punk6529. And in this one Punk6529 goes a lot further into exploring the future potential of NFTs. I will be exploring a lot of these issues in more detail in future newsletters.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading, and see you in the Metaverse.
A great start! Looking forward to more!