Last year, Facebook (The parent company of the Facebook social media app) was changed to Meta. This came after a lot of buzzes were created around the metaverse and the potential of a whole new virtual world existing.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, the main reason for the rebranding of Facebook to meta was to bring the metaverse to life, help people connect with each other in the metaverse and also businesses build an audience and customer base in the metaverse.
Meta was the first big company to go all-in into the metaverse. Before this, metaverse believers already had gotten into the metaverse by buying lands in virtual world platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland.
before that let's get a little look into the metaverse
What is the metaverse?
The term metaverse was first used by Neal Stephenson in his Sci-Fi novel "Snow Crash" in 1992. This term describes the existence of a virtual world accessed by life-like avatars of people in a 3D virtual environment or space.
The metaverse is a virtual universe that embodies several elements of tech like, virtual reality, augmented reality, and blockchain technology.
The metaverse is going to be a projection of the real world in a virtual form where people in the metaverse can work, build businesses, host events, and do some other things that are done in the real world.
A lot of big brands have gotten into the metaverse after Meta made the first move back in 2021.
Recently, luxury fashion brand Gucci got into the metaverse by buying a virtual land in The Sandbox and planning on building a virtual world in the metaverse. They did this by launching a new project called the "Gucci Vault", which will have its NFT collaborations and some vintage items.
Nike also got into the metaverse by collaborating with RTFKT, an NFT studio that creates digital collectibles. Nike's collaboration with this studio was to create NFT sneakers that can be used in the metaverse.
Some brands that are in the metaverse are:
Why are they getting into the metaverse?
I do believe a lot of these brands are jumping in the metaverse wagon to have a place in this new projection of what the world will look like. These brands are investing millions of dollars into the metaverse.
The steps taken by these brands to be part of this show the potential the metaverse has. These brands know how huge it's going to be for them to have their brands in a whole new virtual world with endless possibilities.
This is going to bring about business growth, development, and expansion.
But what is worth taking note of is, most of these brands are luxury brands and companies worth billions of dollars. The assets they'll be creating for use in the metaverse or their services will be worth a lot to an average person in the metaverse.
This makes me wonder if life in the metaverse will be affordable for an average person. The metaverse is still in its early creation phase so I believe in years to come there'll be some changes and development. I also expect to see brands and companies that will come into the metaverse to provide affordable virtual assets and services to people in the metaverse.
