The Metaverse had a moment in 2021. When Facebook became Meta the hype accelerated. Imaginations conjured virtual worlds brimming with creative possibilities. Immersive experiences that titillated senses. And conference rooms. The public conception soon reflected pop culture expressions like Ready Player One. In this world - and Zuckerberg’s mind - users strap on face hardware and motion tracking peripherals to interact digitally without physical presence. Preferably in a closed ecosystem that produces such quantities of data that Facebook can bring dead relatives back to life as advertising shills.
The hype has since chilled. Headlines faded. Skeptics noted that the technology might be impossible to build. And if not impossible, then cost prohibitive. Zuckerberg himself conceded Meta would lose money on their metaverse project for years to come. Concerned netizens feared metaverse crimes (those happen), walled gardens (closed hardware networks), privacy violations (yup), and the same torrent of hate and disinformation that fuels engagement on social networks (not quite the same… so far). Surveys paint a confusing picture of what the peoples want - kids don’t want to metaverse (despite living in proto-metaverses like Roblox and Minecraft), and humans have a healthy fear of machines, but they’re pretty open to working in the metaverse.
So not everybody is in love with the VR vision. Particularly people that started inventing metaverses years before the accidental startup god decided virtual reality would be the successor to the mobile internet. Instead of a metaverse designed, built, operated, and regulated by centralized companies that profit from data mining and advertising, the builders of the pioneer metaverses and their descendants believe in something different - an open metaverse created by and for the people, inclusive and diverse, owned by no one, free from the entry barrier of face hardware. In this conceptualization, the metaverse is a decentralized network of networks, composed of infinitely expanding metaverses, a metaversal fabric of experience that invites users to explore, experiment, and engage.
But if Meta’s ‘Metaverse’ is only the form-factor of virtual reality, then the metaverse is something more foundational. Stripped of uncanny valley avatars, the metaverse is about the exchange and creation of information beyond physical presence; avatars and virtual experiences are only there to amplify the velocity, volume, and fidelity of the information exchanged. This implies a few things:
The metaverse is an array of products - existing and in-development - expressed through different form-factors (text, 2D, 3D, AR, VR, XR, etc.).
Normcorps are already in the metaverse and have been since before AOL Instant Messenger.
Virtual reality and realistic avatars are not the appropriate form-factor for all modes of information exchange in corporations if they impede the velocity, volume, or fidelity of information exchange.
A corporate metaverse tech stack looks pretty familiar. Management is facilitated in apps like Slack, Teams, Discord, Asana, Trello, and Dropbox. Human Resources traverses LinkedIn, Fiverr, and Upwork while Talent Development benefits from Udemy, General Assembly, Lynda, Upwork, Coursera. Marketing presents through omni-channel social worlds of YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Substack, and TikToks. Production is augmented by tools like Sharepoint, Miro, Figma, and chatbots. Together these apps form a constellation that is a corporate metaverse. And while imperfect, pretty functional. In most cases, migrating to a virtual metaverse environment - at the present state of development - would degrade overall performance.
So the reproduction of in-person work in a virtual environment isn’t necessary. But there are uses cases for the metaverse that elevate the experience of decentralized work in each part of the organization.
Management - Asynchronous and hybrid work create new problems for managers. No longer able to monitor with line of sight, some companies are turning to Bossware (surveillance tools that track keystrokes and mouse activity to verify you are working). Metaverse tools might provide alternatives. Asynchronous communications embedded in a metaverse environment can maintain continuity with teams; team members can read, edit, and write. Metaverse office hours are an accessible strategy for generating presence and building professional networks. And the environments can be customized to match the personality of the team, easily swapped out for a fresher design when the vibe gets stale.
Human Resources - The metaverse experience is governed by tiny decisions that result in a metaverse identity. In their very first encounter, users spend time selecting facial features, hair styles and colors, eye color, skin tone, clothing, accessories, shoes, etc. As they spend more time in the metaverse, avatars accumulate a virtual closet of unique items, some of which are pretty wild. Here, the metaverse offers Human Resource teams a few opportunities: learn from the early brand activations and create web3 swag for employees; partner with talent development to create NFT credentials and certificates to build on-chain, web3 resumes; and consider conducting interviews in the metaverse, where an avatar representative might eliminate some of the implicit biases in the hiring process.
Talent Development - Manufacturing was an early adopter of assisted learning system, deploying augmented reality to assembled planes, construct infrastructure, and train elevator repair people. Translating the learning advantages from heavy industry to the knowledge workforce requires a different learning model. In the metaverse, talent development teams partner with storytellers and metaverse content creators to develop immersive, experiential learning journeys that accelerate learning and develop a profound empathy for customers and the world at large.
Marketing - The first entry point for most brands into the metaverse. Heineken, Fidelity, Samsung, JP Morgan, Nike, Gucci (to name just a few) are each using the metaverse to attract attention, embellish their relationships with customers, acquire metaverse native customers, sell products, and grow the brand. Brands partner with storytellers and game developers to design activations and projects that integrate web3 elements - like NFTs - with gaming features to drive social engagement.
Production - Collaboration. Cooperation. Teamwork. A truncated list of activities managers cite to argue for a return to offices. Physical presence that allegedly promotes better versions of social production. Even the best apps are simple digitizations of social technologies that have been around for generations - like whiteboards. In the current state of development, the metaverse offers little to amplify production. Still waiting for the killer app, as the kids like to say. Instead of moving the corporate HQ to the metaverse, partner with digital designers to craft small experiments with the workforce to learn by doing. This could be as simple as entering a meeting through a virtual experience like jumping off a skyscraper and landing in the superhero pose.
The fun has only just begun as this is just part one. Now that we’ve established some distance from the idea that the metaverse is a virtual version of existing reality, we can start to discover metaverse applications for corporations that are beyond the imaginations of traditional work. In the next entry, we’ll share ideas for how metaverse environments can benefit the decentralized workforce and create an employee experience for talent attraction and retention.