That a large portion of companies are betting on the metaverse, or at least studying it, shouldn’t come as a surprise. In the last 12 months, one of the largest digital giants on the planet – namely Meta – has in fact spent in every way (investing over 10 billion dollars) to convince entrepreneurs, professionals and employees that this immersive and digital environment, in which we should transfer a growing part of our daily life, if it were the future.
Zuckerberg’s announcement: “In the metaverse we will also have legs”
by Bruno Ruffilli
The metaverse, however, is not the only great technological perspective to receive great attention and even more investments: it is associated with the web3, the third incarnation of the network based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, which promises to overcome the current web 2.0 dominated by social networks. network. Before clarifying our ideas on what these innovations really represent, it is interesting to see how Italian companies are approaching them.
Social
There is no one in the metaverse
by Andrea Daniele Signorelli
According to a research presented during the event “The future of the web3 and the metaverse” – organized by the Web3 Alliance consortium, whose mission is to clarify and disseminate these issues -, 64% of companies are studying the metaverse, 7 % has already launched a pilot project and 3% is already making a “wide use” of it today, while 1% is making only a “selective use”. Overall, only a quarter of Italian companies, according to the data reported in this research, are in no way integrating, or at least investigating, the potential of the metaverse for businesses.
The widespread desire to exploit its potential is accompanied by a fairly high declared knowledge of the technology in question: none of the respondents claims to have never heard of the metaverse, while only 13% have “heard of it”, but without knowing what be it. 54%, on the other hand, believe that they have limited knowledge, 30% that they have a “good knowledge” and 3% that they are even a “connoisseur and user”.
But how do Italian companies want to use this metaverse? Among those who have already invested and those who plan to do so within three years at the latest, the sectors that get the most attention are, predictably, “digital events” (a good example could be the Fashion Week that was held on Decentraland or the concert by Travis Scott on Fortnite), followed by “positioning”, by the potential in terms of smart working (on which Meta focuses above all) and on the creation of ad hoc digital products or NFTs.
Again for Italian entrepreneurs, the technologies most used in the company to enable the web3 are: artificial intelligence (72% of use, between those who already use it and those who are only experimenting or studying it), augmented reality (60%), reality virtual (57%), blockchain (58%) and finally NFT (which expect to be used only by 46% of the respondents).
And here the matter is already complicated: what does artificial intelligence have to do with the web3 (which, as mentioned, is a term that brings together blockchain-based online services)? And why are technologies such as virtual or augmented reality, which overlap with them only minimally, also included under this umbrella? Is it really credible that 30% of entrepreneurs know what is meant by “metaverse”, when even among professionals there is very little consensus on what this term (and that of “web3”) means?
“From the research we see how there are few and confused ideas”, explained Lucio Lamberti, head of the Metaverse Marketing Lab at the Politecnico di Milano, during the event. “And it’s a shame, because this market really exists: in 2021, 54 billion dollars were spent on the purchase of avatars”. Money spent especially in the gaming world (for example in Fortnite, where 80% of users have made at least one purchase), in platforms that allow anyone to create games (like Roblox) or in immersive social networks like the Korean Zepeto ( 20 million monthly users).
But if you leave the entertainment field, what are the opportunities of the metaverse for companies? “The problem, among other things, is that we don’t really know what problems the metaverse solution solves. Already speaking, as is often done, of ‘metaversi’ in the plural makes no sense: either it is one and interoperable or it does not exist “, explained Lamberti, referring to the need to create a single environment, within which they can various actors participate and where users move freely.
The same skepticism is also raised by Andrea De Micheli, vice president of Web3 Alliance and CEO of the Castadiva Group: “In the metaverse environment I have seen imitations of everyday life that make you laugh. I also think that it can be a solution to problems that do not exist and that we expose ourselves to the risk of failures, such as those that 3D cinema and holograms have encountered in the past ”.
In order for metaverse and web3 – which together with augmented reality could represent the future of digital – to mature and spread, however, it is first of all necessary to understand what they are. Although the boundaries are still blurred, the term metaverse refers to digital and immersive environments (not necessarily in virtual reality) within which to socialize, work or participate in events. The web3 instead indicates, as already mentioned, the possibility of exploiting blockchains and cryptocurrencies to offer online services in which users can automatically participate also from an economic and governance point of view. Two very different innovations that overlap only partially, for example in two realities that exploit both: Decentraland or The Sandbox.
Not everyone, however, sees it this way: “The web3 is a new three-dimensional and interactive web that involves people in such an immersive way as to make it emotionally new”, explains Elena Schiaffino, president of the Web3 Alliance. “In the case of augmented reality, if I frame a work of art with my mobile phone, thus making the textual explanation or other videos and contents appear, I am talking about a new web that comes directly to my heart”.
A very different vision from the canonical one – and in which the “3” of web3 no longer seems to indicate the third version of the network, but rather the three-dimensionality – but which has the merit of underlining the possible convergence with the metaverse: “There are continuous overlaps which, in my opinion, we must take into consideration in their entirety, if we want to try to understand the future ”.
In a phase of expansion and in which the boundaries that define these new technologies are still inevitably blurred, it is legitimate for definitions to change and evolve. Perhaps, however, before continuing along the road that leads to the possible mass adoption of the metaverse and the web3, the time has come to agree on what these terms mean.