Virtually Challenged
“Virtually Challenged” – a cartoon that illustrates the opportunities and pitfalls of the building in the metaverse.
The term ‘metaverse’ originated in a science fiction novel and is the virtual-reality space where users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.
There have been many false dawns for this technology, perhaps the most recent one was Facebook renaming itself “Meta” and seeing a $250Bn drop in value after a poor earnings result (representing the largest drop in value in US stock market history).
In the adult world, attempts at creating virtual worlds have fizzled out (e.g. SecondLife, Hopin), as consumers coming out of COVID want more in-person events (e.g. Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour), but in the world of kids and games, the market is really booming.
For example, the virtual world of Roblox, which has 70M daily active users of which 75% are under 25, made $800M in Q1’24.
Recent market research found that 75% of Roblox users are more likely to notice brands advertising in the Roblox metaverse compared to other platforms.
IKEA has jumped on this bandwagon and is now launching ‘The Co-Worker Game’ on Roblox, which lets players experience working in a virtual IKEA store. If you are from the UK or Ireland and would like to earn £13.15 per hour as the human customer service rep behind a metaverse avatar, you can apply here: thecoworker.co.uk
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