Are you puzzled by what could be the metaverse real-world use cases? Here’s an overview of how the latest technology can be used on a daily basis.
There’s been a Google Trends reversal in the exploration of keywords like “metaverse” and NFTs recently. While those searches boomed in 2021, in the first quarter of 2022, the trend has so far recorded a substantial drop.
Let’s be honest, though. Dramatic events have recently taken over the world, and it is reasonable to think that the metaverse might not be everybody’s focus right now.
Nonetheless, the industry does not seem to have suffered any backlash, and it is recording an increase in investments and interest in the tech industry. This is still the market whose size hit nearly $40 billion last year.
What Is the Metaverse?
The metaverse combines various technology components from video to augmented reality (AR), from blockchain to virtual reality (VR) in a borderless way, allowing users to exist, play, work, socialize and even date within a digital world.
"The metaverse is essentially a massive, interconnected network of virtual spaces," Rabindra Ratan, associate professor of media and information at Michigan State University, recently declared to ABC News.
The internet has taught us to communicate better and more efficiently worldwide, but it lacks the sense of physical space and human connection. The metaverse might just fill that gap.
The worldwide web has facilitated the way we book events. The metaverse allows us to attend those events with our avatar friends and gives us that sense of physical connection and the pleasure of materially being together.
This article will highlight the current helpful use cases of the metaverse and how any individual or business can use it right now.
Real-world Use Cases
The technology is still in its infancy; however, some applicable real-world cases already exist today.
Forward-thinking businesses are all evolving into the virtual world, and we might be already using the metaverse without being aware of it. Facebook, Microsoft, Roblox, and Epic Games have all directed their business models towards it.
Sometimes, its use is so spectacular that millions of people gather to experience the new craze, like in the case of metaverse concerts.
Ariana Grande headlined Fortnite’s Rift Tour in August 2021 in front of 78 million metaverse spectators. Snoop Dogg created his unique metaverse, the Snoopverse on an Ethereum-based decentralized virtual world, The Sandbox.
The list of the metaverse use cases for entertainment purposes could go on. However, the tech’s latest direction is to apply the virtual world to fintech, work, personal wellbeing events, and even dating.
Fintech
The fintech application is no surprise after the explosion of metaverse land sales last year. A plot of land was sold as an investment for the equivalent price of an apartment in Manhattan on the decentralized platform, Decentraland.
The purpose of the $2.4 million real estate deal secured by the Metaverse Group, a subsidiary of Token.com, is to expand within the Fashion Street district and obtain a prominent presence in the industry.
The application of the metaverse and the virtual world onto the professional work sphere has recently seen a massive rise of relevant platforms.
Work
Businesses wish to close the gap between impersonal and unfriendly remote work communication and in-person offices by enabling virtual spaces where colleagues can meet using their avatars.
Before the rebranding to Meta, Facebook revealed a close partnership with Zoom by integrating Zoom Whiteboard and Zoom Meetings with Horizon Workrooms. Teams could connect, collaborate, and create in this virtual workspace using Oculus Quest 2 and the Oculus Remote Desktop app.
Gather.town is a multi-purpose and multi-functional video chat platform for virtual interactions. Their open metaverse aims at building virtual spaces where people can work, socialize, learn and even get married!
Ten thousand teams have already joined their virtual office, and twenty thousand professional events have already been hosted, including academic conferences, job fairs, and professional societies. Virtual events are attractive to businesses too because they are quite cost-effective, being roughly ten times cheaper, saving travel and venue costs, and allowing more people to participate.
Events
Events platform Lu.Ma aims at resolving all the hurdles that come with organizing coordinated video conferences and events via Zoom. It enables businesses or individual professionals to avoid generating links, calendar invites, and data spreadsheets while embracing a unique landing page that combines all these functions for easier coordination.
Fifteen thousand events attended by over 250,000 guests have already been hosted on the platform, so the need to explore beyond event coordination became more compelling for the company. The main goal was to build communities based on understanding the relevant users, connecting with them, and expanding the business outside scheduled zoom meetings.
Their offerings are creating beautiful event pages, combining ticket sales, sending calendar invites, collecting feedback and reviews, creating promo codes and coupons, featuring analytics and attendance, and integrating zoom within their customer relationship management (CRM).
What has it all to do with crypto? Signing in to the platform with your unique MetaMask, Coinbase, or WalletConnect crypto wallet are popular options. The company will launch its Glow Wallet on the Solana blockchain to facilitate NFT and virtual transactions.
Dating
The metaverse is entering every aspect of our lives, including dating. Planet Theta is a new dating metaverse that will be launching this year and promises to facilitate romantic encounters and meet-ups in virtual cafes and open spaces like their Meta Forest. You can bet NFTs will be a crucial part of the dating process by bringing in the latest and trendy fashion accessories to the users who want to make a good first impression.
Conclusion
The metaverse is a versatile technology and can be anything we want it to be. It can be the world's fashion capital in Decentraland, where lands are already as expensive as a high-value apartment in London. Speculator investors might move to the metaverse, and there’s a chance it could go as far as helping the real world’s environmental issues.
Could it also become a replacement for real-world battlefields? Here’s a thought: could nation-states move the military and warfare to the metaverse one day? The US army is already using Hololens technology in high-tech headsets for soldiers to aid in battlefield and training exercises, so it might not even be such distant wishful thinking. In current times, one can just hope that this will be the future and that the technological breakthroughs will offer more than mere efficiency and facility of communication.
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