The Metaverse, in many ways, is rather stupid. Its characters are blocky, Cocomelon fever dreams and its stock is crashing – in late October, shares dropped 24% to their lowest point since 2016 after parent company Facebook reported its second straight quarterly decline. Its Reality Labs division – which sells Metaverse headsets to access said Metaverse – lost $9 billion in the first three quarters. And as of this writing – November 9 – Meta has laid off 11,000 employees after losing $700 billion in market value in what Wall Street called an unmitigated “train wreck”, as reported by CBS News.
Jim Cramer was wrong, and the hubris, he noted, “extraordinary.”
Nonetheless, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not going gently into the good digital night, reiterating his ten-figure commitment to the nascent platform. What that platform actually constitutes remains to be seen (Wired had an excellent summary) – like the internet upon which it is built, it will likely be endless and indefinable, though – as apparent in this NBC video – easily accessible via desktop, mobile, or virtual reality.
What many agree on, though, is that eventually a more accessible Metaverse or something like it will exist, and goods and services, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and more unimagined digital knickknackery will be created, bought, and sold on it. It will be a virtual community that is often described not unlike how Silicon Valley and William Gibson – the author who coined cyberspace – first depicted the internet at the turn of the ‘90s: monumental, groundbreaking, world-changing stuff, a seminal shift on consumer culture, content, and consumption.
And when the gears of industry grind, those with their cogs in place can prosper. As reported by The Food Institute, the video recipe is prospering on the planet’s hottest social network – TikTok – and content creators will be able to harness that sort of influence on the Metaverse. And that means advertising and sales dollars for associated brands, products, and people.
“Even legacy restaurant brands have an opportunity to create unique and compelling digital experiences in the metaverse,” says Scott Absher, CEO of ShiftPixy, an app-based company for shift workers. “Restaurant brands and their employees can adopt a native delivery strategy by converting their kitchens into distribution centers for online orders. When they combine these new capabilities with robust digital ordering, engagement, and loyalty systems, they create a new digital business atop their traditional operations – a digital second floor.”
In a statement to The Food Institute, ShiftPixy says it is already building its own brands to engage Web3 consumers and to demonstrate how traditional QSR and other restaurant brands can transform experiences for their customers beyond online ordering and fulfillment alone. For example, ShiftPixy allows customers to create unique NFT avatars that can be augmented with food purchases at its digital properties for real-world savings and rewards. They can also play mini games against other local real-world consumers or go all digital worldwide, building brand loyalty and being rewarded for spending money and interacting with other consumers.
