Digital Orbit podcast episode 2: Dehyping the metaverse

Author
Blake Friis
Publication Date
16 February 2022

Digital Orbit podcast episode 2: Dehyping the metaverse

Leave it to Mark Zuckerberg to whip everyone into a frenzy.

Ever since Zuckerberg made the very big, very splashy announcement to rebrand Facebook as Meta, I haven’t had many conversations about tech that didn’t include some thoughts or predictions about the metaverse.

No one knows exactly how the metaverse will impact our lives, but nearly everyone seems certain it will. And isn’t that the very definition of hype?

In the latest episode of Digital Orbit, Paul PIebinga, Lionell Schuring, and Jieke Pan from Mobiquity Europe cut through the hype to discuss what the metaverse is, why it’s exciting, and how companies can get in the game before it’s too late.


 

Getting out of the “geek corner”

The metaverse is less about the technologies coming together and more about how creative people can utilize that confluence of technologies to create experiences people crave.

“Sometimes you have technical people saying, ‘look what we can do with this technology!’ And non-technical people go, ‘that’s not very interesting.’ That’s when technology gets stuck in the geek corner,” said Paul. “But with the metaverse, we have all these technologies coming together and it’s the creative people and the business people saying, ‘look what we can do with this!’”

Metaversal multi-tasking

Remember when websites weren’t designed with a mobile experience in mind? The clunkiness of having to navigate a site on a screen it wasn’t built for could range from mildly annoying to absolutely infuriating. 

As companies began to understand the people who engaged with them, they re-prioritized mobile and now we can’t imagine a company failing to do so. Lionell expects the experiences that add up to the metaverse to be developed much more quickly,

“I control the thermostat in my house with my mobile device. If I’m playing on my Oculus and I start to get warm, I don’t want to shut the game down and grab my phone to turn the temperature down a couple degrees,” said Lionell. “I think these newer experiences are going to be designed in a way that allows us to do multiple things without having to switch technologies.”

So, as we look at opportunities for brands in the metaverse, there is going to be value in, say, Domino’s, being the first to let you order a pizza from your VR headset.

Get started or miss out

Paul, Lionell, and Jieke all agree that the key to getting started is…getting started. 

In this early stage of metaverse building, success and failure are far less important than experimentation. Paul, Lionell, and Jieke agree companies looking to see how they can create more immersive experiences in the metaverse that improve their customers' lives, should start playing around with the new technologies now.

While it’s early in the game, the cost of staying on the sidelines too long is missing out on a new generation of potential customers. So, if a company does not have the knowledge or ability to work with new technologies, they can (and should) find a partner to help them.

Listen to more of the Digital Orbit podcast

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