After the establishment of Meta Platforms, former Facebook, Inc., one of the company’s first ads began with a short question that to this day continues to give me goosebumps.
“We always ask where is the future gonna take us,” uttered a voice over an 80s retro soundtrack at the beginning of Meta’s “This future will be made by all of us” commercial. “But the real question is where we are gonna take the future?”
Back in October 2021, when Facebook announced its rebranding into Meta Platforms, the metaverse became one of the most trending subjects over the internet. The idea of a fully digitalized world where people from any corner of the globe can immerse gained a renewed charm, as everyone speculated about their vision of this virtual universe.
Nonetheless, there has been no one unified answer to the most basic question – what exactly is the metaverse?
The concept of a metaverse was first coined by writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel, Snow Crash. Since then, the idea of a fully digitalized world outside of the physical world has created immense fascination in pop culture.
Today, some enthusiasts could make the case that humanity is already on the metaverse. Some argue that NFTs, crypto, videogames, and the blockchain are expressions of the metaverse, while others fantasize about the creation of a fully immersive digital world.
Meta Platforms has given a vague explanation of what the metaverse will be. The company’s version of this digital universe is one in which business, distant learning, and even day-to-day interactions could occur inside an augmented virtual reality world. Yet, such a vision will require the development of technologies that even Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged, back in October, sounded like out of “science fiction.”
Although the question of what is the metaverse continues to create debate, one fact is irrevocable – humanity is heading towards the metaverse at the speed of light, and there is no way back.
While the technologies to create the metaverse are still in development, an entire multi-billion market of digital goods and services has already emerged. Grayscale Investments, a digital currency investor, estimates that the market of goods and services in the metaverse will soon reach $1 Trillion in valuation.
Speculators and companies from various sectors are rushing to obtain a slice of the metaverse pie. Back in mid-2021, plots of digital land in the virtual world, Decentraland, were being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, with one NFT of a 259-parcel virtual estate purchased for $900,000 worth of MANA, Decentraland’s virtual currency.
While multiple companies are trying to get on board the metaverse rush, one sector at the forefront of the development of this digital world is the social media industry. The possibility of social media becoming a fully immersive experience where one could connect with others inside a virtual reality forum produces great fascination among cybernauts.
“I’m thrilled by the positive innovations the metaverse will bring,” said the founder of Artistic Initiative Agency, one of the fastest-growing social media marketing agencies of 2021. “Imagine being in Houston and having your wife and kids in Australia. You will be able to put on a headset and literally be sitting with them inside the metaverse, in a digital home that you created and decorated with your NFTs.”
Artistic Initiative Agency gained notoriety over the past year for pioneering a new form of social media marketing that the agency has coined “high-end social media.” This marketing agency, with offices in Atlanta, GA, and Houston, TX, curates personalized, cinematic quality content for companies and CEOs to transform them into social media influencers.
In a recent interview, the founder of Artistic Initiative expressed an immense enthusiasm about the innovations that the metaverse will bring to the world of social media in the following five years. He is a believer that social media will gain more influence as the world dives into the metaverse. In his view, social media marketing agencies will play a crucial role in weaving the networks that will forge this new digital universe.
The founder accepted talking about his take on the metaverse and his company’s efforts to integrate social media marketing into virtual reality, with the condition that his identity remained anonymous.
The founder holds a futuristic vision about how the metaverse will look like. He envisions a no-distant future in which humans can immerse into a fully digital world and have multi-sensory interactions with each other.
“Imagine putting on a VR headset and having access to your favorite artists or influencers in the digital universe. You will have a digital interactive experience of what they did on a particular day as if they were in front of you,” said the founder.
For the founder, the arrival of the metaverse opens a realm of infinite possibilities. He predicts that the metaverse will drastically transform all industries, from the entertainment sector to commerce.
“This will be web 3.0,” explained the founder. “When web 2.0 was introduced in 1997, people were not as impressed because it was not strikingly different from the original internet. But, as the internet spread, those who had realized the potential of the .com-world could capitalize on it. Now that we are entering the early stages of web 3.0, all those things that we can do today will be advanced in a whole new format.”
The video game industry has given the world an early illustration of the capabilities of the metaverse. Last April, the video game Fortnite held a concert with Travis Scott that drew an audience of more than 12 million concurrent viewers from around the globe.
Humanity is not far from a future in which all sorts of public figures will have the ability to connect with audiences from any country inside the virtual world. In the metaverse, public figures and internet influencers will likely have the ability to host digital interactive experiences for their audiences through their social media accounts.
Likewise, as the founder of Artistic Initiative argues, the potential of such technology is not limited to the entertainment sector. In the coming years, business leaders and thought leaders might also host online courses and interact with clients inside a virtual reality forum.
These innovations “will enhance the trust and your personal brand, making you accessible to your audience,” said the founder. “If I have an Instagram account with videos about my business and what I do, it will be a lot more impactful if a person can actually log on and see me personally in the virtual world.”
The founder believes that the players who embrace these avant-garde technologies will assert their dominance in the emerging virtual world. Thus, in recent months, Artistic Initiative began conducting research on how social media marketing will evolve in the metaverse era.
At Artistic Initiative, “we want to embrace the change and bring our clients into the metaverse prior to it being adopted by the mainstream world,” said the founder. “It will be a baby-step process; nobody knows how it will play out, but we already know the beginning key points. It’s like when bitcoin came out. Everyone thought bitcoin was ridiculous; look how big crypto is now.”
The founder has no doubt that the future of social media is in the metaverse. The role of social media marketing agencies, like Artistic Initiative, will be to help companies adopt these innovations and use them to create new business opportunities.
“Building your presence in the metaverse will become a service that we will start offering in the near future,” said the founder. “We will begin offering to create your own NFT, purchase land in the metaverse, build your land, and create your digital assets and digital avatar.”
The founder and his company are already taking concrete steps towards adopting these emerging technologies. Artistic Initiative plans to open its first virtual office in early 2022. The agency intends to use this digital space to meet with clients, host virtual events and courses, and bring together the members of its creative team located in other countries.
The founder is confident that social media will assume a critical role inside the metaverse. He speculates that people’s social media presence will become their presentation card in the virtual world. Therefore, he exhorts companies and entrepreneurs to start investing in building their personal brand in social media in preparation for the arrival of the metaverse.
In the metaverse, “if you are a public figure with a strong social media brand, you will be able to interact more closely with your audience, and they are going to trust you and want to work with you,” said the founder. “If you are not heavy in social media now, are you gonna get into social media when everyone is getting into the metaverse?”
Humanity’s race towards the metaverse has just begun. It is difficult to process the fact that 20 years ago, many were still struggling with understanding the internet, and today, the world is approaching at gigantic steps the creation of a virtual universe.
Although no one can say with certainty how the metaverse will be, many companies and ambitious entrepreneurs are already seeking business opportunities inside this emerging trillion-dollar digital industry.
At the end of the interview, the founder of Artistic Initiative was the first to recognize that there are more questions than answers about this digital universe today. However, he points out that there is no doubt about the immense business potential of the metaverse.
“All of this has just begun, but we are talking about it because we are part of that research and development phase,” concluded the founder. “Some people want to understand the metaverse because they want to consume, but we are trying to understand it because we want to build within and leverage the platform.”
By Juan Sebastian Restrepo,
