Metaverse and Metaverse Business Models

Not only Facebook, but also other technology giants like Google, Epic Games, Microsoft, or Tencent, invest billions of dollars every year in virtual parallel worlds. This is not just about a new form of social communities or VR (virtual reality) games, but about a new dimension of digital business models, the so-called Metaverse business models. With its new holding name "Meta," Facebook has secured the top position in brands for the new virtual parallel worlds. In 1992, author Neal Stephenson coined the term "Metaverse" with his highly acclaimed science fiction novel "Snow Crash." According to Wikipedia, the term refers to a "digital space that emerges through the convergence of virtual, augmented, and physical reality." The term itself is a portmanteau of the prefix "meta-" (meaning "beyond") and "universe," referring to virtual 3D realities, essentially as the successor to the internet. Here, people can interact in real-time in a digital world with their programmable avatars and engage in various activities familiar from the real world. The Metaverse is no longer just about pure video games: While video games still dominate (77%, according to Statista), there is a surprisingly broad range of various use cases: virtual travel - also due to travel restrictions during the pandemic (71%), movies (56%), virtual participation in music concerts (39%), VR-animated workouts and sports (37%), watching sports events (20%), education (16%), home or house planning (15%), visiting museums, exhibitions, or trade fairs (12%), and relaxation (9%). All these applications indicate new practical business opportunities thanks to modern digital business models! The trading of properties or other objects already mentioned requires digital business models with innovative customer value propositions, as well as creative revenue models with (increasingly blockchain-based) digital rights and cryptocurrencies, through which digital goods are traded, promoted, and sold on virtual marketplaces. Decentraland, for example, uses the cryptocurrency MANA to purchase one of over 90,000 properties. New technological developments such as fungible or non-fungible tokens (NFTs), smart contracts, or decentralized apps (dApps) will also provide further important impulses for new business opportunities here. These economic systems increasingly represent the fourth generation of digital platforms, the so-called digital ecosystems. They involve the provision of services through the interaction of individual, independent partners who do not all need to know each other directly but only through nodes. It is about creating shared value and innovation through stable networks and cooperative behavior based on a central platform. One such Metaverse ecosystem is the world-leading online game by Epic Games, "Fortnite." Fortnite is already a place where millions of people experience the feeling of being not only synchronized and present in real-time but also spatially present with other people. During the so-called Rift Tour, for example, millions of fans experienced their superstar Ariana Grande synchronously via Fortnite. Currently running in the Epic ecosystem is the Soundwave series with concerts by artists like Mohamed Hamaki, Tones and I, Emicida, Gen Hoshino, and Aya Nakamura. All these partnerships embody the fundamental idea of an ecosystem, where collaborations and crossovers with other companies (even competitors!) constantly create new benefits (such as additional gameplay options, characters, or even new applications) for users. The same applies to the aforementioned Metaverse game "The Sandbox": partnerships exist with companies such as adidas, Warner Music Group, Atari, and PwC Hong Kong, as well as music producers like deadmau5 or Snoop Dogg, and comic series like Pororo, Shaun the Sheep, The Walking Dead, Care Bears, and The Smurfs. By the way: Similar to Decentraland, payments in Fortnite are made using its own virtual currency (here called V-Bucks). Looking briefly into the near future, in addition to the applications mentioned above, many more practical business opportunities arise thanks to digital business models in areas such as eLearning, eHealth, eGovernment, eCollaboration, or eConstruction. It is up to us and our companies to develop new ideas for digital Metaverse business models in a timely manner, to then offer them either through US ecosystems or even better, to market them in future virtual, pan-European parallel worlds.