What Is Social Media Going to Look Like in the Metaverse?

Social media is firmly rooted in the Web2 world, often known as the so-called “user-generated” web. But the concept is not going to die out as we embrace the new era of Web3 and the metaverse.

With the metaverse, common social media behaviors such as liking and sharing content are no longer restricted to traditional platforms. You’ll be able to like and share anything and everything, whether you’re using virtual world environments to work, learn or socialize.

Explore Metaverse coins

Anyone who has tried Facebook parent Meta’s Horizons platform will have noticed how the core features of the world’s most popular social media site are still a big part of the experience. Users have profiles, they can like and share content, only the experience is far more immersive than before.

So, Horizons is perhaps a sign of how we can expect social media to look as it slowly coalesces with the metaverse. The term social media may well become redundant as people use virtual worlds, where everything within them becomes social and connected, without borders. 

More Immersive Social Experiences

The metaverse is an amalgamation of various technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, plus gaming, productivity tools, chat applications, e-commerce and, of course, social media.

The metaverse is based on experiences such as gaming, e-commerce and collaborative work, while the VR and AR aspects provide a more immersive element. Meanwhile, the social side of the metaverse helps ensure our experiences within it are connected to reality, as we share them with our friends.

It makes sense that social media in the metaverse will be more focused on providing immersive, interactive experiences, such as gaming and meeting in virtual environments through our avatars, as opposed to just connecting over a 2D website or app. People will be able to meet virtually instead of simply connecting, with immersive environments providing realistic sights and sounds. They may even be able to stimulate our other senses, including smell and touch. Instead of sending someone a text when you miss them, you’ll be able to meet up and walk around a virtual garden, hand in hand, or go shopping together in an immersive metaverse store. 

Enhancing Real-World Life

Unlike VR, which is an entirely virtual world, AR is where computer graphics are overlaid onto the real world, and can be experienced using a headset, goggles or even a smartphone. 

It is with AR that we will perhaps discover the best social experiences, and a number of platforms are already looking to provide them. Xone is a Web3 social media platform built atop of blockchain technology that uses AR to create virtual experiences in the real world. 

With Xone, users can create and interact with others in two kinds of zones, which are known as “Xones”. These include personal xones that act as a kind of user profile page, as we are familiar with in traditional social media. Then there are community xones, where users can host group gatherings, events, product launches and other kinds of social activities.

An alternative concept is offered by Peer, which is focused on encouraging people to interact with the physical world around them, as opposed to getting people to just scroll endlessly through a news feed.

Peer, which launched earlier this year, is powered by geo-location technologies and based on an adaptive 3D map. It provides a gamified experience within the real-world, allowing users to create and share maps of where they have been, pinning their experiences to physical locations, sharing memories and other moments from their real lives. Users can explore reality and interact with digital objects, messages and other information that has been posted in their location. These will be overlaid onto the real world as 3D graphics, enhancing our everyday lives in exciting new ways.

With Xone and Peer, many of their features will seem familiar to those who’re well-versed in traditional social media platforms. The difference is that, rather than just browsing through user’s profiles and seeing 2D pictures, this information will be presented within the real, three-dimensional world we live in, making it more immersive and explorable.

This will have big implications for brands in terms of how they advertise. Metaverse-based social media will provide intriguing new ways for them to reach out to people, enabling them to create digital products and other content that can be bought and sold as NFTs. Brands will be keen to explore these new avenues in order to connect with younger, more switched-on, generations.

The Next Evolution Of Social Media

The future of the metaverse is sure to be intrinsically linked with that of social media, and perhaps even its next evolution, in the same way that it represents the future of online work, gaming and business.

The metaverse brings all of these activities under one roof, transforming them with greater immersion. It promises to magnify and intensify everything we like about social media, bringing it closer to the realities in which we live.