The Metaverse: discovering the new frontier of the Internet

The year 2022 will be a year of innovation in the world of communication and digital marketing. The pandemic has highlighted how digital has become the main place where processes and interactions typical of everyday life take place and, nowadays, the virtual presence is an even more essential element for any brand.

But what if there was a chance to increase the range of possibilities and attractiveness that digital systems provide, offering customers even more immersive and engaging experiences? That’s where the Metaverse comes in.

The term “metaverse” was first used in Neal Stephenson’s science fiction book, “Snow crash”, which proposed a dystopian hyper-connected world based on a three-dimensional virtual reality populated by avatars and, with that term, referred to a particular type of highly immersive mediated experience.

And it is starting from the fervid imagination of the American writer that tech giants such as Meta, Nvidia, Roblox, are studying the best way to develop and make accessible a real metaverse. The rebranding promoted by Mark Zuckerberg, from Facebook to Meta, marks the first step towards an epochal change and the strong will of the American giant to project itself even more towards this new challenge.

The Metaverse would represent the 4.0 version of the Internet: a connected network of collaborative and immersive virtual worlds where an unlimited number of users, through the creation of their own avatar, are able to interact, work and make purchases in a manner highly similar to everyday life. This is a real transposition of physical reality in a virtual dimension, within which users will feel a sense of proximity and participation, of closeness and identification, where they will not be limited only to observe and see content, but can be protagonists in all respects. All this is done with the aim of improving the quality of time normally spent on screens, offering a package of unique experiences closer to the real world.

The internet of the future will set aside concepts such as hypertextuality and multidimensionality and will increasingly face open realities, where online spaces – such as websites and social platforms – will adapt and change according to the needs and requirements of the user. In fact, all the elements that make up the metaverse will leverage on the “user experience”, a concept that is already present today in any successful online experience and that has as its main purpose the centrality of the user.

The absolute novelty could be to offer an instrument able to give wide improvement and speed to the eCommerce dynamics, being able to connect people, companies, objects and virtual environments responding both to the corporate needs and to the consumer ones.

The mix of augmented and virtual reality, with the implementation of virtual currencies and NFT (non-fungible tokens) would allow avatars to perform activities and actions with a naturalness typical of everyday life. While, from the work point of view, it would increase productivity by offering virtual reality experiences focused on teamworking, improve remote communication and make remote work much more efficient. The creation of realistic, three-dimensional virtual environments will revolutionize the way we experience business meetings and gatherings, but, above all, more space will be given to the design of online events that are increasingly immersive and engaging for customers.

Just as happened in the mid-90s with eCommerce, this suggestive idea could represent the new frontier of virtual interaction, capable of revolutionizing the dynamics of promotion, acquisition and customer loyalty. In a world where online and offline coexist and where the shopping experience is increasingly immersive, the metaverse could be the key factor to completely improve the eCommerce and retail experience.

As you can see, the digital world is constantly changing and it’s important to keep up to date with the changes taking place in this important reality in order to reach more users and be successful.

It is precisely by relying on a communication agency like Mediability that you will be able to know and above all make the most of the latest trends.