How to create real value in the metaverse?

Talk about the three major elements of service in the immersive new world, especially the spread of wealth.

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The current technology companies can be described as "you sing me on the stage", competing to bet heavily on the "meta-universe", but what should be done to win the initiative of the meta-universe era? Is the metacosm a simple "copy-paste" of an existing digital environment? Of course not. Should 2D screen ads that are ubiquitous on the street be presented directly in 3D in the virtual world? Far from enough. We all have more expectations for the metaverse, so whoever can actively correct the chaos on the existing social network and give full play to the unique attribute advantages of new media will have the hope of becoming the founder of the rules of the metaverse.

Part of what makes the metaverse so reverie is that it gives us the opportunity to fix most of the problems that exist in the existing internet. The current social network, in fact, in the original network of the "read-only" attribute and added a "write" component, its essence is still publishing and consumption tools, and then built-in some of the most basic forms of interaction, which is like a "walled garden" of the collection, it can explore the business model, only sell user privacy, to obtain economic benefits. Worse still, its positioning of interests even deviates from the society that carries it, so it can easily become a force for inciting disagreements if you are not careful. As a result, the digital world desperately tries to capture our attention, but it never provides real meaning.

The real implication is that only by disrupting existing business models with rich, immersive experiences can communities/communities living in them enjoy the economic benefits of co-building a virtual world. Moreover, this meaning needs to be conveyed.

Diverse design

Real life tells us that a sense of belonging is at the heart of maintaining long-term stability in our communities, and our digital bodies need that same sense of belonging.

There is such a "chaos" in today's social networks, and companies are more willing to regard the importance of "public attention/traffic" as more important than real content, and even allow users to create a large number of information that is easy to intensify contradictions to attract different audiences and influence group emotions. However, real data proves that "content is still the king of value", and brands with leading, representative content receive a 40% higher return on investment than other brands (from Nielsen data). The core value of the metaverse era will be reflected in the "diversity level". Because since one of the necessary prerequisites for swimming in the metaverse is to give meaning to our digital identity, companies must understand and accept all the cultural, emotional, expressive, and taste differences that currently exist objectively.

Of course, companies can analyze how to reflect those "non-mass groups" in brand positioning in a fairer way through audience research, so as to gain wide recognition and clear support from different audiences. For example, if apparel brands still only express the aesthetic style and cultural preferences of white people in advertising, they will not attract the general acceptance of consumers in other countries and regions.

Instead, companies must focus on creating customized marketing products for their target audiences. This refers not only to creating different commercials or content, but also to taking the time to research which brands, artists, and cultural works resonate more with those audiences, thereby increasing engagement. In order to solve this problem, companies may wish to refer to the opinions from "non-public groups" who help verify the company's established marketing plan.

Of course, it's not enough to build such a broadly representative community, but to ensure that designers and content creators can continue to function in this new virtual world. Due to the lack of diversity, today's AI algorithms are often biased, and if we can't diversify our talents in the metaverse, then the same mistakes will definitely happen again. At present, most of the talent pool of the early metaverse comes from the fields of "games" and "digital software development". Moreover, the world's STEM workforce (including computer-related jobs) is predominantly white male, and black and Hispanic workers are still grossly underrepresented, and women make up only 25 percent (Pew Research Center data).

To increase talent diversity, design teams must make "specific designs" in the recruitment and training process. Over the years, the barbaric growth of social networks has been a lesson, and now the additional time and cost invested will translate into higher engagement, deeper social meaning, and better return on investment in the future.

Giving priority to diversity in conjunction with recruitment and training is a daunting but absolutely necessary task. To successfully increase the diversity of their team members, companies need to reflect on their hiring processes and consider whether their existing candidate base is deficient in terms of diversity and representation. If you're not sure where to start, you might want to establish demographic goals, audit your organization's current situation, identify gaps, set goals for the next phase, and then gradually unify your appeals with the hiring process.

Rich and immersive experience

The birth of Web 3.0 has undoubtedly opened the door for 3D and other new types of immersive content, but we can still take a few tips from the current wave of social networking and video sharing. Major brands are seizing the opportunity, and the average medium-sized enterprise also produces more than 500 marketing videos per year, while large listed companies must release at least a few thousand videos to maintain market competitiveness. Compared to companies that lack an effective strategy, companies with an effective video promotion strategy have 49% higher revenue growth (from HubSpot data), and social media short videos are better than ordinary long videos (from BuzzSumo data). Just as the content richness of the Internet is 100 times that of today's ten years ago, the content richness of the metaverse era will be 100 times richer than it is now.

With the overnight popularity of video production, brands and marketing teams are also feeling tremendous pressure to accelerate the transformation of video strategies to keep up with the growing audience demand. In this regard, individual creators clearly have an advantage. Complex workflows and content creation barriers often make it more difficult for large enterprises to produce video content quickly. To streamline production processes, companies need to improve their existing production ideas and eliminate any obstacles that prevent them from producing content quickly and efficiently. Solving this problem, like the diversification of the recruitment process, requires us to explore it in depth. On the one hand, brands need to ensure fair and comprehensive material use, solve potential licensing issues, and enable efficient collaboration between all parties; on the other hand, brands need to maintain flexibility and quickly adopt new creative tools. As the metaverse evolves, a new generation of content production tools is likely to emerge that will help generate high-quality content at scale. In the face of these new platforms, brands must act quickly and actively adapt.

Share economic benefits with the community

Unlike the traditional social networking model, where monetizing users' private data is a poor path to shareholder gains, the "strong" in the metaverse must unite community builders and participants, help all parties share the upside of the economy, and ultimately establish a more level playing field between enterprises and creators.

To engage top talent in creating rich and immersive experiences, Metacosm companies need to adapt incentives to extend their focus from employees to customer segments. As we all know, technology companies often adopt a business model of providing equity to employees, and then product customers generate corporate revenue through advertising browsing. But the combination of digital property rights and token distribution has brought new business models to open up space, which means that meta-universe enterprises can not only share ownership with employees, but even be able to transfer part of ownership to active members of the community.

In addition to establishing a more harmonious symbiotic relationship with customers, the metacosm is also expected to allow artists from "non-mass communities" to pave the way for future development. TikTok launched the Discovery List, which focuses on 50 influential and diverse creators. They've also built a diversity creator collective, hoping to bring together great authors and make the in-app atmosphere more inclusive. And Instagram has also begun to add the "black creator" tag to the app. While these efforts are admirable, they don't solve the underlying problem: As long as today's web giants continue to adopt advertising-powered business models, there will always be a squeeze between them and the customers who drive their business volumes.

It's clear that the really strong in the metaverse must be the companies and brands that can spot and work to correct the persistent problems in existing social media. As long as we do a better job in terms of diversity and representation, the community will use practical actions to help companies gain a dominant position and higher returns. A good content creation strategy will guide participants to express their feelings, bring a richer and more immersive brand experience, and ultimately drive up the company's operating revenue.

In other words, only companies that value two-way partnerships and want to share the wealth created by the virtual world with members of the community in it can truly sustain and prosper. As for the companies that still cling to the old ideas and intend to continue to use the existing business model to continue to make money in the metaverse, they will inevitably be eliminated by market competition and watch this huge cake be taken away by a new generation of market leaders.

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[Editor's Note]: Overseas Calls is a compilation team of Science and Technology Walkers, focusing on new technologies, new ideas and new trends overseas.

Source | Fast Company

Written by | Calls from overseas

Image | Calls from overseas