Facebook recently changed its name to Meta, which was to align itself with the ambition of building Metaverse. If you are one who is into technology, you may have come across this word ‘Metaverse’.

Metaverse is the combination of technology that includes virtual reality, augmented reality and videos. This is a unique product that is coming into the market. It envisions the users working, playing and staying connected with friends through everything from concerts to conferences.

The extended reality also known as the XR, which is the combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality, experts, believe will play an important role. Virtual 3D environments, which are central to this concept of the Metaverse, will become the transformative medium for social and business engagement.

The XR technologies were limited to only video games and niche enterprise applications. As games become platforms for social experiences, there is an expected increase that their discoverable and continuous virtual worlds and medium for open and creative expression will be applied to other contexts.

It is expected to have a strong connection to the real world and will in the end become an extension of it. Companies and individuals will have the ability to participate in an economic activity in the same way they do currently. This simply means being able to build, trade and invest in products, goods and services.

There are several examples of companies that have used the Metaverse technology. Minecraft is one of the games that has employed the use of this technology. It is one of the beloved games by children where players can create their own digital character and build whatever they desire.

Microsoft is also another company that is already using holograms and it is developing extended reality with its Microsoft Mesh platform that will combine the real world with augmented reality and virtual reality. It showed plans for bringing mixed reality that includes holograms and virtual avatars to Microsoft Teams next year.

In order to enable people to build, trade and invest in products, goods and services, it may rely on non- fungible tokens (NFT) as the foundation of the creation. NFT is a claim of ownership for a unique, non-interchangeable digital asset that is stored on a Blockchain.

If they become a commonly adopted tool, they could help in accelerating the use of XR ecosystems as places people go to combine elements of the digital economy with their offline lives.

With it being in the early stages of development, there are questions about what Metaverse will mean for privacy, be inclusive and how to mitigate harmful content and environments that could be created.

One of its key benefits is that you will be physically engaged with places and people instead of watching them through a window.