The Metaverse is 10 Years Away and There's Only One Way to Make It

Gartner , a $4.7 billion company and provider of insights and expert guidance with over 40 years of experience in tech research, predicted the peak of the Metaverse to occur in ten years. But how does this affect us right now?

If you don't feel like watching a 1-hour-long webinar but still want to know which technologies will shape the future of the Metaverse over the next two to ten years — welcome aboard. In just eight minutes, we'll bring you up to speed on everything you need to know.

BRIEF OVERVIEW & METAVERSE PIZZA

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2022 shared 25 "must-know" innovations we need to pay attention to. These innovations are said to change the way business is done, and it's better to be the one pioneering them than to be out of the loop. In fact, the Gartner Hype Cycle can help us understand how a specific technology's perceived value changes over its life cycle.

TLDR; Analysts, consultants, and decision-makers rely on Gartner Inc. to identify and validate long-term strategies.

Let's cover the most exciting tidbits:

What does it mean to be an innovation trigger on a hype cycle?

Most of the technologies mentioned are placed on an "innovation trigger" stage, which means that they have the potential to become a significant agent of change in the coming years. In other words, they can create new markets and industries and potentially become the foundation of new enterprise business models.

Most of the technologies on the chart are in the "innovation trigger" stage — when their commercial usefulness is still unproven. And yet, they receive a substantial amount of media attention. Then comes the "peak of high expectations," when there are dozens of failures per success story, after which mass interest wanes, known as the "trough of disillusionment."

Technologies and their benefits become evident only after overcoming this stage when you reach the "slope of enlightenment." Mass adoption or achieving a "plateau of productivity" occurs if developers manage to pass all the preceding stages and finalize the product.

For example, metaverses are creating a lot of buzz at the moment. Still, Gartner analysts expect it will take at least a decade to hit the mainstream and become widely adopted by the general public. But at the same time, customers and companies have already begun to establish their expectations about how it should be used and how their lives will change in the future.

Consumer expectations vs. Business expectations

What consumers want and expect in a future metaverse experience is entirely different from what businesses need in a business environment. Companies focus on finding new innovations and implementing a metaverse-type of environment to improve the customer experience and boost productivity. On the other hand, consumers are interested in how the Metaverse can be integrated into their everyday lives. They also want to know how it will enhance their social life and give them new opportunities to connect with friends, family members, and other like-minded people.

The Metaverse is still new and often misunderstood by both companies and consumers. Like many new technologies, it requires significant time and investment to educate, build standards, and grow into the mainstream. But which elements of the Metaverse can already be implemented today? And how will it influence the future?

Which elements of the Metaverse will empower business opportunities

The Metaverse provides permanent, immersive, collaborative and interoperable capabilities and business models that will enable organizations to expand digital businesses.

Moreover, it will also allow the complex and dynamic nature of technology to reach new heights that are impossible for our current forms of online interaction and communication.

Today there are many individual use cases for the Metaverse, some of which are already providing real benefits to businesses and their customers. Opportunities in various industries include:

• Higher education, medical, military, and other professions can provide a more exciting learning experience. They don't need to build their infrastructure, as the Metaverse will act as the foundation.
• Virtual events have grown in popularity over the past two years and can now present more integrated offerings.
• Retailers can expand their reach with immersive shopping, allowing customers to purchase more complex items.
• Businesses can achieve better interaction, collaboration, and connections with their employees through virtually-enhanced workspaces.
• Social media can move into the Metaverse, where users can interact with 3D avatars.

Find something cool that Gartner didn't mention in the picture, and I'll buy you a meta pizza.

What does it mean for us? The market is exploring and testing solutions that are capable of fusing the virtual and real worlds in new ways. Companies need to evaluate the possibilities and define how best to deploy them today.

According to Gartner analysts, this process may take up to 10 years to become mainstream. This process will consist of three overlapping phases, each affecting technology, market, and product characteristics. The transition to a mature metaverse will be similar to previous technological shifts, such as the industrial revolution or the mobile device era. New technical leaders will emerge during its development, potentially displacing those of prior generations.

Starting in 2028, the vision and potential of the Metaverse will become much more precise and easier to manage for organizations and individual users. It will be built on inspiring use cases, applications, and enhanced by the maturation of related technologies such as 5G, computer vision, immersive technologies, and digital currencies.

As these technologies mature, product creators will be presented with new opportunities and challenges for interacting with customers and partners. Still, it's essential to consider the potential impact now because it may require changes in longstanding business models to leverage future metaverse opportunities effectively.

We believe there will be a series of ups and downs for different projects with different visions.

Only some will make it through to the end and find their niche, their Product-Market Fit.

THE BEST TIME TO EXPERIMENT

A number of different companies are experimenting and testing out how to launch their products in the Metaverse. For them, it is a trendy new advertising opportunity, a chance to not miss out on a promising niche, and a search for a new form of monetization.

Depending on how it is implemented, it can give the company a competitive advantage and increase the level of engagement among its users. Let's look at some examples of large companies collaborating in the Metaverse.

The sports giant Nike made a meta jump in 2021 by partnering with Roblox and creating a virtual world called Nikeland. Nike's virtual space was visited by more than 21M players and became one of the biggest successes in the virtual world in less than a year. The brand sees the prospect of building a dialog with the next generation of athletes and making them fans of the firm.

H&M has started to cooperate with Metaverse CREEK City. Now users can arrange for three-dimensional shopping in the virtual world. At the same time, customers can order clothes in the digital store and receive them on their doorstep. The most significant advantage of the H&M digital store is that it works 24/7.

Just like Nike used Roblox for its journey into the Metaverse, Gucci did the same thing when it sold virtual handbags. And impressively, the bag commanded a higher price than its real-world counterpart. Just imagine how much influence the Metaverse has when an item that only exists in a virtual world can be so valuable.

One of the main things that all these brands have in common is their ability to adapt to changes and experiment with new technologies. This is the key to staying ahead of the game in this rapidly evolving environment. The more agile approach is essential if we want to succeed and remain relevant in the future.

So what can we learn from this? The answer is simple - experiment!

Hype, PR, and buzz are not success metrics. They are just short-term wins. In the long run, what really matters is our solutions' effectiveness and how users interact with our products and services on a daily basis. We need to think about different ways to build loyalty and engage with our users on a deeper level.

Product-Market Fit Signs In The Metaverse

PMF is not an indicator or a certain point. It is the state of a product that finally begins to "please the market." The path to achieving product-market fit is not calculated using formulas. Product market fit is a complex criterion. A single metric cannot measure it. It is a condition determined by the match with the target audience's expectations. Success depends on the quality of the user experience. Even if the product is easy to use, it can create negative emotions if irrelevant to the audience.

No silver bullet. It is impossible to determine what actions will work for you and why based on your past performance. It is essential to experiment and test new approaches. You need to find the elements that create positive emotions among your users and then focus on delivering those elements over and over again. Look at how it has worked for popular Metaverses:

Roblox x Consumer Brand x Experiential Marketing Events = Millions of visits from the case

Decentraland x Poker x Tokens = ICE Poker with 12k daily active users (Q2 2022)

Party.Space x Zapier x Corporate Event = >2.2 hours session average duration

Product-market fit is the basis for achieving hyper-product growth. The main factors indicating that you have reached this state are considerable increases in sales, and consequently, revenue and satisfied customers who are using your product regularly.

The conclusion

Many people say we already have metaverses today, but they are missing the big picture. We are witnessing the birth of the Metaverse. This will only become more apparent over the coming years as more companies begin creating their virtual experience. They will continue experimenting with new ideas and ways to use the technology to their advantage. As a result, the Metaverse will continue to grow and develop.

One thing is clear — we will not be able to ignore the Metaverse. Whether we realize it or not, it is already affecting us.

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions or topics you want to see in future posts.