What is the metaverse?

The development of the metaverse is currently at an early stage. Just as it is difficult to clearly describe the Internet in one sentence, the metaverse can only be viewed from today's perspective and we can only vaguely guess at the characteristics, possibilities and effects it will have in the coming years.

The metaverse is the next evolutionary stage of the Internet, in which the virtual and physical worlds are increasingly merging. The Metaverse is a multimedia, three-dimensional space into which you can immerse yourself with your personal avatar and in which you can interact with other people and virtual elements. 

There is only one metaverse, just as there is only one internet. It is always active, cannot be switched off and is not controlled by anyone. In the future, we will increasingly immerse ourselves in virtual spaces and worlds, working, playing, traveling, relaxing, shopping, communicating and exchanging ideas with other people.

Above all, the Metaverse enables companies to experience their brand, products and services in a completely new way and build a closer relationship with customers. It also allows internal processes to be designed more efficiently and sustainably, cooperation within the organization to be optimized and the company to position itself externally as a modern and innovative company.

The Web 1.0 was developed in the 1990s to make it easier for people to access knowledge. Smartphones, social media and apps made the internet increasingly mobile and interactive in the late 2000s. In the Web 2.0 you could easily and quickly create your own content, express ideas and opinions, publish on social networks and connect and share with other people. As a counter-movement to the monopolistic power of digital companies such as Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, the decentralized Web3 developed. As the next generation of the World Wide Web, it is based on blockchain technology and includes approaches such as decentralization and a token-based economy.

Significant progress in the areas of Artificial intelligence (KI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR) and the introduction of decentralized Web3-technologies such as Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and NFTs (Non-Fungible Token) have laid the foundation for the Metaverse.

These technologies provide the basis for a series of concrete approaches and concepts that describe what the metaverse is and, above all, what it can become in the future. At the same time, there is still no uniform definition that can be agreed upon.

So there are exciting and as yet unexplored worlds ahead of us.

The term metaverse was first used in the 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The author describes the metaverse as a kind of global virtual reality in which people act as avatars in a three-dimensional space. People gain access to the metaverse through personal terminals that project a virtual reality onto the glasses worn by the user.

The science fiction novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was impressively staged as a film by Steven Spielberg in 2018. It tells of a dystopian world in the year 2045 that is plagued by global warming and energy crises. To escape their despair, people move around in a metaverse world called OASIS - a virtual multiplayer game.

A key criterion of the Metaverse is the fact that, unlike centralized providers such as Facebook, Google or Second Life, it is not owned by a single company. Instead, countless companies, start-ups and developers are currently working on a more open, decentralized Web3 standard. The huge monetary and human resources commitment of the big tech companies shows just how much potential they see in this.

Even if the metaverse is still new, it is already important for companies and decision-makers to not just passively observe the rapid development, but to actively engage with it. Experimenting, getting your bearings and, above all, gaining experience will give you a head start in terms of knowledge before the metaverse becomes mainstream in a few years' time.

October 28, 2021 was not only an important day for Mark Zuckerberg and his company Facebook. It was the start of one of the most significant internet trends since the invention of the smartphone and social media. On this day, most people probably heard the word metaverse for the first time. The Facebook founder not only presented his vision of the internet of the future, but also named his company Meta to emphasize its strategy and vision.

In 2014, the company bought the start-up for just two billion US dollars. Oculus VR. It has since been converted into Reality Labs and is now considered the market leader in the field of virtual reality software and hardware. Meta takes the topic very seriously and invests over ten billion US dollars annually in its Reality Labs development department. At the same time, 10,000 new, highly qualified jobs are to be created over the next five years in the European Union alone in order to build up the Metaverse.

Facebook may not be the metaverse, but it is already playing an important role in its development. It has a good chance of playing a major role in the metaverse in the long term. More than 3.5 billion people worldwide use the social media and messaging services Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. A good basis for a leadership role and at the same time an incredible responsibility, which the Group has often neglected in recent years in the pursuit of profit and maximum scaling. The renaming of the Group was therefore initially seen by many as a distraction from the many problems.

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