Best of the Week: Black holes in the metaverse
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Hi Damian, read all that metaverse stuff. Very interesting, but. Please define the metaverse in a single sentence that I will understand. I’m not sure you did it in your piece and I haven’t got the intestinal fortitude to read it all again. Ta in advance.
Hi Alan,
Thanks very much for the comment and question. A very good one indeed.
I wish I could answer it for you but I don’t believe there is a true definition of the metaverse.
Towards the beginning of the piece I wrote, “How can you have a clue when the entire concept is still defining itself? And that is part of the issue currently. Despite the industry grappling with the foundational question, “what is the metaverse?”, it has been quick to throw money at it.”
The concept of the metaverse is still very much a work in progress. It seems the majority want it to be a true blurring or the virtual and the real, where decisions/opportunities in the virtual world affect the real world and vice verse.
But at this stage it seems like nothing more than online games we have become accustomed to with smatterings of in-game purchases, some of which extend to real life. And whether or not we get to that definition is questionable.
Hope that helps,
Damian
Thanks for that valiant attempt, Damian. What I guess I don’t understand is how the virtual world and the real world can influence each other. I had an agency client who had showers in the office after he’d been ”virtual” skiing on his computer, sitting at his desk. He often said it really knocked him up, physically and was a buzz. In the real world, it must have saved him a lot of money, since he didn’t have to travel to the U.S. so it robbed the travel agents, the airlines, the hotels/lodges and restaurants of income.
I also don’t quite get how so-called experienced marketers can commit significant marketing dollars to an ill-defined concept where the majority of consumers live in the ”real” world, not necessarily influenced by the virtual world, and even these marketers don’t ”get it”. Do they just want to sound cool in the pub to their peers? Costly way to do that – at their company’s expense I suspect. Wonder what their boards would say? The CMO would probably say Alan Robertson’s a silly old bugger, and the board might say, we agree with him.
It’s got me.
Pleasure, Alan.
You raise some very good points there, particularly in terms of spend and other ramifications for a more virtually-based world.
I feel part of it is FOMO as well as trying to get in early and stake a claim. Perhaps a impolite term could be metaverse squatting.
If it does take off sooner rather than later, maybe brands will be happy they invested early and have a presence.
I feel there is too much work to do on the tech front, however, for the metaverse to expand rapidly.