The metaverse has been a runaway hype train with little grounding in near-term product reality. However, it’s still worth exploring and ideating, as some aspects will likely define our connected future. There are also important delineations in where the metaverse will apply to our lives.
For example, the metaverse that’s most often discussed involves online multiplayer worlds, usually in a gaming context. But a more impactful manifestation could be a “real-world metaverse” where digital dimension is infused with the physical world to add animation, context and meaning.
In fact, that second metaverse track is more fitting to the Greek root ‘meta’ which means beyond. Tools like visual search and AR can reveal digital content that goes beyond a given item’s physical state. We’re talking everything from statues to storefronts (a topic of the upcoming Localogy Place).
Meanwhile, tech giants are chasing this vision, including Google’s work in AR navigation and wayfinding (Live View), and identifying real-world objects with your smartphone (Google Lens). The latter has commercial potential in making the world shoppable, a la Snap Scan and Pinterest Lens.
Scaling Up
Speaking of Snap, it’s the latest company to go down this road and push the idea of a real-world metaverse (our words). Last week, it announced Custom Landmarkers. This essentially opens up and crowdsources its previous Landmarkers that animate real-world waypoints through mobile AR lenses.
Now, instead of the 30 or so Landmarkers that Snap has created in-house, any Snapchat lens developer can build one. By opening things up in this way, Snap is essentially scaling up the production of Landmarkers to the inhabitable earth… and the creative and practical use cases that will result.
Like the broader lens universe, the outcomes will be both practical and whimsical. BLNK founder and creative director Michael Nicoll tells me he’s been working with Custom Landmarkers to create geo-anchored artistic fare around L.A. – think virtual street art with an interactive kick.
Nicoll’s goal is to bring this flavor of lenses to his entertainment and brand clients. There, it can open up new dimension to any marketing mix. This could include everything from consumer brands to recording artists, to lens activations outside multi-location brands like Starbucks and Panera.
But the real scale could be in the long-tail SMB segment. Utilizing Custom Landmarkers, they can create animated experiences outside their storefronts that capture unique business personas or products. This will increasingly resonate with camera-forward and increasingly buying-empowered Gen-Z.
Digitally Anchored
So how does this all work? Custom Landmarkers are now available in the latest update to Snap’s Lens Studio (AR creation platform). It includes a framework for Snap lens creators to scan a given location, then build a lens that’s both endemic to that place and digitally anchored to it.
That smartphone-based scanning process happens for a few reasons. It helps developers create lenses that integrate contextually and dimensionally with a given place. It could also serve as a trigger for future lens activation. Once scanned, Snap can recognize that place and tee up the right lenses.
But the latter is more of a long-term development. In the nearer term, custom landmarkers are activated through Snapcodes that creators generate when they build the Landmarker itself. They can then plant that Snapcode at the location as a call to action for passers-by to pull out their phones.
This approach is important in the near term, as consumers still need that nudge. Furthermore, QR codes are a familiar medium with which users are comfortable – especially Snapcodes within the Snapchat community. That makes them a sort of physical-media bridge to a real-world metaverse.
Boiling this down to a practical example, a theme park could create Landmarkers around their grounds and plant Snapcodes accordingly. These can both launch the intended lens and serve as a sort of nudge or reminder for users to pull out their phones and fire up Snapchat to see something cool.
Lens Playbook
Snap knows that for any of the above to scale in any meaningful way, it has to crowdsource Landmarkers, as noted. This approach is also aligned with Snap’s broader lens playbook in terms of letting the creative community lead the way. This has worked so far – vaulting it to 6 billion+ daily lens plays.
Now, Landmarkers could get that same treatment, and the potential lies in what lens developers do with it. But notably, Snap’s Lens Studio platform (used to create all of the above) continues to get more accessible and easy to use. That could further unlock opportunity among individual creators and SMBs.
“Our approach has always been to turn over our AR technology to our community of 250,000+ Lens Creators around the world through Lens Studio,” Snap’s Sophia Dominguez tells me. “Now, AR creators and developers can build anchored, location-based AR experiences to local places they care about.”
