Metaverse – New Opportunities and challenges for brands in ever-changing virtual worlds

First things first, what is the metaverse really?

Facebook, recently renamed Meta, is one of the companies that vows to lead the implementation of the metaverse. Meta itself describes the metaverse as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”
The metaverse is a persistent and highly immersive collection of virtual worlds where many users can interact simultaneously through their virtual identities.

It relies heavily on virtual reality and augmented reality but also includes Web 3.0, IoT, blockchain, and Non-Fungible Tokens, just to name a few. Unlike current VR, which is mostly used for gaming, this virtual world could be used in a variety of ways: working, playing, concerts, cinema trips, or just socializing.

Ideally, all virtual and augmented worlds will be connected into a single interoperable metaverse, with elements shared between several digital worlds. It could be illustrated as an endless archipelago, with each island representing a virtual world, like Meta’s Horizon World, Decentraland, The Sandbox, etc. Each island is a virtual world, and the collection is called the metaverse. The metaverse in its perfect form is a collection including all virtual worlds.

However, the word is increasingly used to define virtual universes like The Sandbox. The Sandbox is a virtual platform that provides tools and the ecosystem for players to create content and games while monetizing them at the same time. Each player can create their own world with unique objects and that collection of virtual worlds exists within the Sandbox. Essentially, it keeps the characteristics of the metaverse in that it is a persistent and immersive virtual ecosystem where many users can have complex interactions through their avatars. It is a form of metaverse.

In other words, The Sandbox is its own archipelago, and is a form of metaverse, but the perfect metaverse is the one that brings every existing archipelago into one. To better understand how the metaverse is built, make sure to have a look at Jon Radoff’s depiction of “The Seven Layers of the metaverse.”

Key attributes of the metaverse

• Persistence: when users come back there’s some sort of continuity and not a reboot. Life will continue whether people are online or offline.
• Interoperability: value in one digital world can compound in others. Experiences, possessions, and identities will travel unchanged across platforms.
• Social: a place to socialize, meet new people, strengthen existing relationships, and create new communities.
• In-game economy: users can have virtual jobs and earn possessions with real-world value. 
• Identity: users interact through avatars that have many opportunities for customization and allow for complex interactions.
• Decentralized: owned and shaped by the people living, connecting, creating, and participating in it.
• Digital & physical: spans across many aspects of life with open and closed platforms.
• Populated by multiple contributors: user-generated content, organizations’ content, and commercial companies’ content.

Who is building the metaverse?

Of course, the metaverse is built by some major companies like Meta, Microsoft, Google, Dream Games, or Nvidia. However, the move to the metaverse is also powered by some game-changing startups, creating the tools or platforms to enable the metaverse. Here is a rapid overview of those:

Many companies are participating in building the metaverse, and one thing is for certain, you should probably get in too!

Why brands are putting so much effort into the metaverse?

	Illustration
Creating new experiences	150 million people tuned in to Luo Tyanyi’s (a virtual singer whose voice is made from synthesized sounds) live-stream on NYE.
Building immersive tools for work	Microsoft created Mesh, an extension of Teams to enable next-generation remote reunions that give an immersive experience through mixed reality.
Generating a real community around your event	Brands have colonized the metaverse to create a keen interest around their event. Warner Bros had a virtual party on Roblox to promote the film “In the Heights”
Create long-lasting relationships with fans	Hyundai has created in Roblox Hyundai Mobility Adventure, an environment containing 5 parks where users can interact and experience Hyundai’s mobility offerings with their avatars.
Creating new best marketing practices	The restaurant-chain Wendy’s streamed their quest in a Fortnite event called Food Fight, where they destroyed virtual freezers to advertise their “never frozen beef” policy. The brand saw a 119% increase in brand mentions across social media.
Developing new sales channels	Burberry has collaborated with the video game Honor of Kings, bringing Burberry designs to the game. Any gamer interested in the character’s outfit can be redirected to a near Burberry store.

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The Nest by Webhelp – Improving customer experience and securing your next-gen business

Combining irreplaceable human touch and a high-tech approach, we support meta companies at every step of their journey. The Nest, a dedicated outsourcing partner gives you all you need to ensure the most immersive and seamless experience for your customers.

Treat your users with care

• 5-star customer support – Providing your customers with simplicity in a very complex universe and leverage a strong human touch to build emotional connection
  • 24/7 multichannel and multilingual assistance
  • Customer and merchants onboarding
  • Self-service options and chatbots implementation to process most frequent customer requests
  • Tech-savvy, engaged, and empathetic brand ambassadors – continuously trained on the most technical topics
  • Customer journey mapping with actionable customer insights
    
• Payment management, disputes & chargeback processing – Ensuring every experience stays a positive one through expert management.
  • Payment data completeness checks
  • Assistance for payment dispute concerns
  • Retrieval requests from merchants

Protect your business & crack down on fraud

• Users’ identity validation – Combining proprietary KYC/KYB platform to human checks and manual fallbacks for complex operations
  • Identity verification (ID verification, Face Match, Verification call, PEP, …)
  • KYC/KYB checks (sanctions list, AML, Crosslinking, Sanctions list…)
  • Alert management
    
• Fraud monitoring and money laundering detection – Leveraging advanced fraud prevention tools, machine learning, and agile teams to secure your clients’ digital wallets
  • Machine learning to detect uncommon behaviors that require attention
  • Outbound calls to verify transactions
  • Monitoring of accounts and transactions irregularities
  • Pre-set alerts to detect money laundering concerns and seek out verification
    
• Preserve your creators – Addressing content verification & compliance comprehensively so your creators can focus on producing
  • Compliance with intellectual property regulations
  • Blocking of stolen accounts and stolen NFT transactions
  • Blocking of multi-accounts (repeat offenders or campaign abusers)

Safeguard your users & moderate content on every platform

• Keep your content healthy and adapted to your users – The Nest builds on solid experienceamong tech startups, to ensure your suers are protected through every virtual world andevery interface
  • AI tools to detect inappropriate content and threatening behaviors
  • Human moderators for ambiguous content
  • Live moderation of user-generated content (chat, live stream, photos, videos etc.)
  • Banning of ill-intentioned users on all platforms
  • Carefully implemented processes

Manage your platform

• Create and maintain a best-in-class platform – Ensuring your platform remains easy-touse and adapted to your customers
  • Content tagging
  • Data entry and labelling
  • Localization and culturalization services