Let’s talk Meta
Recently I have been getting into the metaverse with worlds such as VR Chat, Altspace, Sandbox and Decentraland being at the top of my list for places to hang out, create virtual experiences and share good times with friends. More recently in Decentraland a virtual world on the blockchain users can own virtual land known as parcels which are backed by the native token MANA and due to the fact that MANA is a currency trading pair with the USD, this enables land owned and other items in decentraland to obtain real world value.
This has attracted lots of companies such as Gemini, an online crypto marketplace made by the Winklevoss twins, as well as Atari, these companies see the value in decentraland and other VR worlds built on the blockchain as they now become a great source to build interactive experiences for online stores as well as experimental marketing campaigns.
The future of Marketing
Just like social media platforms in the early to mid 2000s, virtual reality will play a key role within how businesses market themselves towards customers by providing instant customer service within on online vritual world, store attendees could manage customer interactions from their own homes and not need to manage stores on the high street.
This allows products to be visually represented, to allow customers to look and potentially touch/ feel the product to get a better idea of its value. Currently online marketplaces are represented via images and GIFs, with AR coming into play on shopify and other online retailers willing to experiment with the technology.
However, virtual worlds offer a large mixture of these technologies to create a really good user experience. For example in Decentraland and other VR worlds not only would products be visible in a 3d space but AR could bring the dimensions of the product into the real world allowing for a really customised expereince.
Brands on Point
Currently there are not many brands in virtual worlds or using AR, however Amazon and Shopify brands are using this technology to create online empires, connect virtually with customers and investors all while unintentionally creating a use case a alongside setting the foundations to how brands interact with customers in online 3d spaces.
Brands such as 100Rainbows which sell a therapeutic artistic product to allow adults to paint by numbers teaching art skills to the masses is an amazon brand inside decentraland. Tours of the artwork are given quite frequently and although to actually buy the product users have to go to amazon from the store, it is just a matter of time until store owners can sell physical products directly on decentraland and other virtual worlds.
Take a look at his YouTube channel and learn about decentraland and all things good about how brands interact with each other on there.
NFT Galleries
Non Fungible Tokens are all the craze lately with most sellers of NFTs unlike 100 Rainbows are exclusively crypto brands and accept a wide variety of tokens from their store bases on Open Sea. Most NFTs such as crypto kitties and crypto punks have showcases of their art in decentraland and other worlds. However, NFT galleries are extremely popular in decentraland and are nearly the only thing that take up the events page on decentralands website.
This provides another use case for NFTs being used in a ecommerce setting, even though there are tonnes of applications for NFTs and not just being minted as artwork for now the world is opening up to the endless use cases of NFTs on the ethereum and multiple other blockchains.
