Ever since Facebook decided to rebrand and reposition the company as Meta, the Metaverse has been a hot property amongst companies, big and small all over the world. And each wants to stake their claim to the virtual future.

This week we are going to replay one of our most popular episodes of the past year, all about the Metaverse.

In this episode, we chat with Nirmala Shome, the Head of Community for the virtual fashion house The Fabricant. We talk about what the Metaverse means and how to make sense of it as a consumer and as a business or brand.

What Exactly Is A Metaverse?

There isn’t simply one Metaverse, there are multiple. The definition is persistent virtual spaces that multiple people can come to, interact in, transact, and experience together in real-time.

So it’s like a shared persistent space that is virtual, and often it’s represented as a 3D space. But I’d say the key thing is that it’s like a shared real-time experience between multiple people. So you know, an example of Metaverse is like a game like Fortnite or Second Life – it’s not just like a singular experience. It’s a multi-group experience.

Does Anyone Own The Metaverse?

No, no one owns the Metaverse. You know that the Metaverse is not like a centralized thing. It’s like Metaverse is can kind of, you know, different metaverses for like a long time. Facebook has just rebranded itself as Meta. That’s it. But no, they’re not the owners of the Metaverse. And no one is.

Can You Tell Us About Your Experience Working At The Fabricant Which Produces Virtual Apparel For The Metaverse?

The Fabricant is a virtual fashion house. But we’re also creating a platform to enable people to create digital clothing, to then trade that digital clothing because it has value as unique one of one NFT’s and then also wear that digital clothing. And that’s when the Metaverse comes into it, as we’re trying to make sure all the items that we create are interoperable. So what that means is they can move freely between different spaces online.

So whether that be like a Minecraft type of Metaverse where it’s a game, or whether it’s a full 3D rendered Fortnite experience, we create the garments and we help facilitate the creation of garments with our community. We enable the trading and we also enable the tools people need. But what I would say that what The Fabricant is trying to do, and I think this is what’s interesting about the Metaverse, is that we’re physically creating clothing, we’re creating a platform, but actually what the point of all that is, is to create a new digital fashion economic layer.

Where in this space, you will have many fashion houses, where anyone can come, start their labels, and sell their digital clothing. There can be people that are photographers in the Metaverse that take that item and set it up in virtual spaces and photograph it and do music videos with it in the Metaverse.

Do You Think That Most Businesses Should Play A Role In The Metaverse?

I think it’s good to think about what is a company’s Metaverse strategy? And obviously, it depends on what your business is. The key thing is you want whatever you create (your product or your service) to be interoperable so that it can exist in multiple spaces at once.

You don’t want it to be closed up. And this is where I think all these software companies are so used to creating closed systems like Apple and Google and Facebook, and this is not what people want. They want to have transferability across all these places. And that’s critical.

What’s exciting is to think about different Metaverse partners and figure out how to work together. A lot of them are built on blockchains and allow for multiple blockchains so that you can cross transfer assets across different Metaverses. So I think that’s a really important thing to look at.

And Who Is In The Metaverse Right Now?

People have been playing games for a long time, but I don’t want to use the word gamer as a singular thing, because it’s not like the fact is that so many people are gamers. You could be part of an active Discord group and be part of the Metaverse. So essentially, if you’re part of a community that is active. That happens all online, not in a physical community.

I think Discord is a really interesting thing to look at or Twitch. Those are the people that are kind of playing in this space. Crypto-native people just because the Metaverse is where the crypto assets hold value, more so in the physical world.

I think we all transitioned into being in semi Metaverses as we are having to do everything online. As you know, having shared meeting spaces – like Twitter spaces, and Clubhouse – are all forms of these shared persistent virtual spaces.

How Can One Get Started?

I think the best way is to find a community that you connect with. Say you are a creative or an artist, maybe there’s a particular artist or community that you can follow. Join Discord, see what they do there, and see what they’re posting about. Or maybe there’s like a platform you’re interested in for example Sandbox is a really interesting one. It’s about starting with exploration and curiosity in mind.

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