Meta Sets to Open Clothing Store for Avatar in Its Metaverse

- Meta has announced it will introduce online stores on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger for users to buy digital outfits to style their avatars while promising to add VR soon.
- The tech giant said it would start with outfits from Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne, with more brands to follow.
- The store will open first to users in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, following closely on the heels of the company's recent improvements, introducing 3D avatars to Instagram and upgrading avatars for Facebook and Messenger.
- Meta has recently made a U-turn from building its own metaverse to creating an open framework for the private sector, lawmakers, academia, and users to contribute to building the metaverse for the benefit of interoperability.

Keywords: Meta, avatar, metaverse, immersive, AR, VR, interoperability.


Full Story

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Meta is set to add yet another milestone to the evolution of the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the giant tech company, announced in a post that the company would be opening an online store where users can buy digital apparel for their avatars. He also made the announcement during an Instagram Live with Eva Chen, Instagram’s vice president of fashion partnership. The use of the digital representations known as an avatar to shop, socialize, work and learn in a connected and immersive online environment has been the hallmark of the metaverse. In the words of Zuckerberg, this innovation with other digital commodities to be introduced will serve as a means of self-expression and an engine of the creative economy.


The digital apparel store for avatars will debut on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram for users to purchase clothing to style their avatars. The store, expected to go live in the coming week, will start with outfits from Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne, with more brands to follow. The store will open first in the United States, Canada, Thailand, and Mexico. As part of the earlier efforts to improve the digital representations, Meta introduced 3D avatars to Instagram some months ago. It also redesigned the avatars for Facebook and Messenger. Although the company is yet to roll out information on the pricing for the new digital outfits, the free clothing options will still be available.


Meta and its Metaverse

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When Meta announced its rebranding, it alluded to the intent to build the metaverse. The Massachusetts-based company said it would hire 10,000 engineers to build the infrastructure and tools of the metaverse, where creators can build their games using templates provided by Meta. These steps are geared toward the plan of the company to go beyond the social media experience and seamlessly incorporate virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) into its apps and services. Meta introduced a $10 million Creator Fund to make good on its promise to encourage creators on the platform. In sharp contrast to the above, the President of Global Affairs at Meta, Nick Clegg, recently wrote what has come to be understood that Meta may not be building its own metaverse. Instead, Meta may be creating an open framework where the private sector, lawmakers, civil society, academia, and the people who will use the technologies will contribute to its evolution. Clegg mentioned many benefits of the metaverse and stated how Meta could not be the leading provider of the digital space.

Some of the benefits mentioned include:
1. Using the AR glasses to get virtual direction in your line of sight or instantaneous translations of street signs in foreign languages
3. Making it possible to have a conversation with someone who is thousands of miles away as a three-dimensional hologram
3. Educational benefits may range from helping medical students practice surgical techniques to bringing school lessons to life in new and exciting ways.

Clegg also described how his close team has been meeting in Meta's Horizon Workrooms app, in which they interact as avatars in virtual meeting rooms, complete with whiteboards, bedroom tables, wall arts, and futuristic cityscapes visible through the windows.

Part of the reasons given by Clegg for the switch to an open metaverse border on laying the foundation for interoperability. He expressed his conviction that through this open framework, the metaverse can avoid the holes in the web2 where users operate in the "walled gardens" of a few dominant operating systems. To achieve an interoperable space in the metaverse, it has to be built by not one or two tech giants but a mix of public and private initiatives.


What could interoperability mean for the new online clothing store for avatars?

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The idea of a creative economy has always taken center stage in Meta's plans for the metaverse. The creative economy implies a space where creators are rewarded for their innovations and creativity. The new online clothing store for avatars is expected to operate in such a way that developers can create digital apparel for sale to users. The announcement has generated excitement for some users and cynicism from others. One thing that will be a game-changer and influence a wider adoption is the ability for developers to build and the users to use the digital commodities across platforms.

Different companies building for the metaverse have their priorities to break the idea down. For Meta, it has always been some virtual houses where you can hang out with all your friends. For example, in its presentation on metaverse, Meta portrayed a scenario in which a young woman is sitting on her sofa scrolling through Instagram when she sees a video a friend posted of a concert happening halfway across the world. The video transited to the concert where the woman appears in a hologram and can make eye contact with her friend who is physically there.

For Microsoft, the metaverse could involve virtual meeting rooms to train new staff or chat with remote coworkers. Interoperability will add to the value creation if a staff member who has an interview in the Microsoft metaverse can shop for suitable clothing for his avatar in one of Meta's online clothing stores. The possibility of this requires companies to cooperate but how profitable it may be for them is the question that may pose some challenges. How profitable is it for Fortnite to give players a portal to jump straight over to World of Worldcraft? Added to the profitability challenge is the computing power needed for such a concept which could be further away than we think. The online clothing store for avatars is a manifestation of the existing building blocks. Some earlier building blocks for this futuristic technology include motion-tracking tools that can distinguish where a person is looking or the position of their hands and the ability to host many people on a server at a time. Most importantly, the metaverse is not just one specific technology but a shift in how we interact with technology.


New Products and some steps toward open interoperability

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Zuckerberg said in his announcement that he would bring the online clothing store to VR soon. With more virtual and augmented reality being churned out, there are ongoing efforts by some oversight groups to keep the industry on the same page. The Metaverse Standards Forum, led by the Khronos group, is the latest of these. It aims to drive open interoperability for creators and developers to build across platforms. The platform announced it already has significant players such as Meta, Microsoft, Sony, Nvidia, Epic Games, Unity, and others on board. However, the effectiveness of this consortium will depend on having enough companies adopt their standards. In all, it is an exciting time for innovation and creativity.

As technology keeps closing the gap between the virtual and physical world, "apparel oft proclaims the man," said Shakespeare- but no longer only in the physical world.






Author: Gate.io Observer: M. Olatunji
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