Business Networking in the Metaverse
By: Lauren Marsicano
Insta: @networkingmaverick
Business Networking in the Metaverse
Imagine walking the streets of Paris from your living room. Or picture attending a conference where you can shake hands with other attendees from the comfort of your home office. This is what visionaries expect for the future of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). For this to be possible, virtual spaces will be created in which people can move about and interact with one another.
“But there are already virtual spaces where people interact,” you might be saying.
And you would be right, but virtual spaces are evolving past chat rooms, social media groups, and video chats.
The future of virtual meetings and events will happen in the metaverse.
What is the metaverse?
The metaverse is an immersive virtual space, in which people interact with one another. An example of one of these virtual spaces is Second Life. Created in 2003, Second Life is an online multimedia platform that allows over 1 million players worldwide to interact with one another via virtual avatars.
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook (which was recently renamed Meta), describes the metaverse as the next step in the evolution of the internet. He envisions the internet becoming a fully immersive space that you not only look at, but are inside of. The idea is to seamlessly blend the digital space with your physical space, so you can literally feel like you are with people who might be on the other side of the world. In his vision of the metaverse, you would also have the ability to move about a digital space that cannot possibly exist in the physical world. Or you could bring digital spaces to life in the physical world.
How can the metaverse affect business networking?
After the 2020 worldwide health crisis, many events went completely virtual. There are virtual conferences, seminars, and networking events that are readily accessible to anyone with a mobile device or computer. And there has also an increase in hybrid events that integrate digital experiences with the physical world. With more businesses moving to remote work or going completely virtual, we could be seeing an increase in VR/AR to create more interactive virtual workspaces. Depending on the state of our world, our health, and our technology, all events or spaces where many people interact with one another could move to the metaverse indefinitely.
Will all events move to the metaverse?
The short answer is: No.
VR and AR technology is still in its infancy. There are VR headsets that are fairly affordable, such as the Oculus, that people use to play games, workout, meet people, and move about virtual worlds. And there are more immersive devices that integrate sensors to physically simulate touch and other sensations from the virtual world, but they are usually not affordable and can be complicated to operate and maintain.
AR is even farther from becoming seamless as it can require physical components being put into place to convincingly bring a virtual world into the real world. Right now, the only AR experiences that are readily available are games, like Pokémon Go,that allow you to move about the real world integrating virtual elements with your mobile device as your eyes and ears.
Considering that this technology still has a long way to go before it feels seamless, business networking events will likely remain virtual, hybrid, or in-person for a while. The metaverse is not likely to replace traditional business networking any time soon.
But, as technology continues to integrate into our daily lives and accessing virtual spaces becomes more seamless, it stands to reason that there may be a time when it will be easy for people to literally shake hands in the metaverse sometime in the distant (but not-too-distant) future.
Whether it be virtual, hybrid, in-person, or in the metaverse…
Happy Connecting!