Article on "Meta Marketing" by Shreya Sural

 Meta Marketing

Shreya Sural , Roll No. - 51

B.Com Semester - II (2021-24)

On 29^th of October, 2021 Mark  Zuckerberg made an stunning announcement  that Facebook will now be called META and as soon as this announcement happened the press went crazy , social media was on fire and the world finally realized that the next big thing in tech has actually arrived and just as we were trying to sink this in , Mr. Satya Nadella presented Microsoft's version of metaverse. NIKE has already its assets for the metaverse and H&M   has already opened a store in the metaverse and all of this reinforced the fact that metaverse is not just a fancy sci-fi looking concept but literally  the next version of internet itself.

But while most of us only know that it’s the next big thing very few of us know why exactly is the meta important, and most importantly what exactly is the utility value of the metaverse?

People by now already knows what metaverse is. Long story short, it is the virtual world wherein just like you and I can talk to anyone on Facebook even if that person is on the other side of the globe, in the metaverse  you can go one step ahead  and literally interact with that person, laugh with that person and even go to coffee with them in the virtual world as if you’re actually meeting them.  Furthermore because of this virtual world, just like we have these amazing game world like GTA5, WITCHER and FORTNITE, you can literally travel to these fascinating places and have a fantastic virtual experience with your friends.

Now, for entering into such a place you need to wear a giant box with a device on your hand to get into the metaverse .  If this box, its oculus will first of all cost you Rs.37000 and most importantly with the current internet bandwidth it’s not even possible to use the metaverse. Now here the question arises that why the companies like NIKE and H&M are aggressively trying to embrace that cannot even be used by most people.  Now if we take a step back and look into 2014, with Rs.180 per gb of internet cost who had the data pack to keep using net all time, although the technology to access the service was not that cheap or that accessible.  But then as time passed three things happened , the cost of internet dropped drastically , the speed of internet picked up drastically and most importantly because of cheap internet our priorities changed from data cost to memory allocation and hence streaming became viable and desirable as a service. This is how when three variables, i.e ,   technology of access , technology of connectivity and creators came on together and made many thing relevant in the Indian  market.

Now, if look metaverse closely,  it is on a very similar trajectory , we have services like Facebook meta or Nvidia’s omniverse which are metaverse services . The technology to access these services is a gadget like oculus which is extremely costly at the moment. We have creators in the metaverse which includes companies that will design worlds, maps, objects and games for the metaverse. Lastly, we have the internet speed that needs to be at least 120-150mbps to be able to access the metaverse seriously. This is where you need to trace the trajectory of these variables in the future. If you look at the past five years he cost of oculus has gone down from $599 to $299, the average speed of internet is about to touch 120mbps by 2025, by that time the companies will have enough products and services in the metaverse that can be utilized by people like you and me.

Now, the most important question is that why the hell do we need the metaverse and what is its utility value? For the gamers it’s obviously a paradise but what about others. There’s a fundamental nature in human beings which turned us from insignificant apes to the rulers of the planet. Mankind has a most important feature of bonding that is built by three attributes – experience  , engagement and expression.  This metaverse is one of the most important stepping stone to achieve the same because there will be a time when many people from many countries who will be able to interact together virtually. Metaverse can literally help us to break boundaries to build an incredible world that can spark creativity and innovation, which will give an organization three superpowers, training sessions can be transformed from  boring videos to immersive experience, secondly, virtual interaction can lead to better productivity and lastly the attrition rate will go down.

As the technology becomes more affordable, as internet becomes much faster and most importantly if individuals gets a platform of interacting freely virtually, metaverse as a concept will redefine the way human beings interact with each other.

THANK YOU