The Metaverse: How it could affect your business

The Metaverse is a futuristic vision of the internet, a virtual world where people will be fully immersed in their digital environment. People will interact with people and objects in the way that they currently do in real life.

It will be developed by connecting virtual spaces together to create a 3D world, with people moving around the different spaces as they choose. To enable the feeling of reality, technology such as VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) will be integral to bringing the Metaverse to life. We can expect to see lots more AR and VR products being developed over the coming years.

As the Metaverse becomes more popular, consumers’ expectations will change, and more growth opportunities will emerge. For example, shopping for clothes could be done by wearing AR technology to create a simulation of a clothes store. The customer could browse the virtual store and try on different clothes, without having to get on public transport or drive to a store.

Of course, how the Metaverse will work for different types of businesses will vary but if you are a business that sells products, you can expect your competitors to be investing in the technology required to be able to offer virtual stores.

Businesses in the education sector have already started to explore how VR and AR can improve the learning experience. Businesses who are training new or existing employees can provide virtual training experiences that are not only more engaging, but this solution also eliminates the need for learners to travel to a physical training venue.

In the automobile industry, car manufacturers and car dealers have been looking at developing test drives that take place in extended reality, providing car buyers with as close to the real experience of driving a vehicle as possible – without the hassle of visiting numerous car dealerships.

It’s already here to some degree with companies like Second Life having a thriving virtual world economy.

As for when it will be mainstream only time will tell but currently all the large players like Microsoft, Google and  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has already rebranded the social media platform as Meta, a first step towards creating his vision for a Metaverse. Many other innovative businesses are working on plans to support their own journey into the Metaverse.

Over the next few years, we will see significant progress in the development of the Metaverse, with Zuckerberg already said to be investing millions of dollars on setting up a team of over 10,000 engineers to work on the project.