The Outside View: What Facebook’s Meta Rebrand Signals for E-commerce

Facebook Inc.’s rebrand as Meta Platforms Inc. underscores how urgent it is for retailers and brands to build experiential e-commerce into their business strategies today in order to establish a distinctive presence in the metaverse tomorrow.  Often described as the next generation of the internet, the metaverse is a connected, 3D virtual world where consumers, through their individual avatars, are able to interact in real time with the digital environment and everything and everyone in it. In this virtual universe, which is already beginning to take form, users will participate in activities like shopping, gaming, learning, working and attending concerts and events — but they’ll also use the space to just hang out and socialize with one another. That means, essentially, the metaverse is the new mall. Today, the largest metaverse platforms are Roblox and Epic Games’ Fortnite — with 45 million daily active users and 350 million monthly active users, respectively, but the metaverse will evolve quickly and new offerings that aren’t strictly focused on gaming will emerge, drawing their own purpose-based communities of users. Forward-thinking brands and retailers are already creating immersive e-commerce experiences such as 3D virtual flagships and pop-up stores and envisioning how their brand and products should appear in

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