BORED WITH THE USUAL DATING SERVICES? TRY DATING IN A METAVERSE

Over the past year, metaverses have gone from unknown to familiar to all but those most reluctant to use the internet. One of the most significant steps in this direction was the development of a Metaverse by the Meta (Formerly known as Facebook) corporation. After Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was working on creating his metaverse, interest in this topic simply went off the scale. Today we want to take a closer look at what a metaverse is, how it works, and how it could change the entire online dating industry. And believe us, there’s a lotb to unpack here!

Metaverses: principles of their work, advantages, and disadvantages The Metaverse is a digital reality that exists in parallel with the real world. At this stage of development, it looks more like an in-depth version of virtual reality, but in the future, it could become a completely different space.

Interestingly, the term “metaverse” itself is far from new. It was first used by writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Avalanche. The description strongly resembled what we later saw in the movie The Matrix. In cinema, in addition to The Matrix, the ideas of metaverses can be seen in the films Tron, Ready Player One, Gamer, and many others. And in the video game industry, you can draw an analogy with the metaverse in Minecraft.

All these examples help us better understand what a metaverse is, in general terms. But still not completely. Moreover, we still cannot say which path the existing metaverses will take in the coming years. Perhaps soon they will be radically different from what we see now. There are currently three main characteristics of a metaverse: It’s always online and never switches off. The user can connect to it or disconnect at any time. The rest of the time, the metaverse carries on living its own life without the participation of the user.

The Metaverse uses a wide range of technologies that immerse a person in the digital world, from VR and AR to cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Within the metaverse, there are laws and economics. They can be considered as whole separate states, with their borders, their own rules, their currency, and much more. Yes, the metaverses are now, shall we say, in their infancy. But we can already talk about their clear advantages and existing disadvantages.

Benefits of metaverses:

A completely new format of communication between people.
The opportunity to discover vast digital worlds.
A real opportunity to study, work and earn directly in the digital space.

Disadvantages of metaverses:

Imperfect technologies that do not yet allow the idea of the metaverse to be fully revealed.
The high cost of high-quality and technologically advanced VR equipment.
Misunderstanding by many people what a metaverse is and why it’s needed.

If you are interested in our opinion, we are convinced that the emergence of such digital spaces is a really important step for humanity. But they have one more serious disadvantage, which we have not mentioned and will discuss a little later.

Can metaverses replace classic dating sites and apps?

Comparing the metaverses with dating sites is not entirely fair. They are completely different forms of communication. The Metaverse provides an order of magnitude more unique opportunities. Imagine you connect to a virtual space, you find yourself in a large open VR world. Here you can move freely, make virtual purchases or, for example, sell NFTs. But most importantly, in the metaverse, you can interact with the avatars of other users. For example, approach someone, chat, go on a virtual walk together, attend a VR concert by your favourite band, and so on.

We can offer several examples of existing metaverses:

Single Town by Bumble
Great Date by Zoosk
Tinderverse by Tinder

So far, they do not offer full functionality, but in the future, they could replace dating apps and sites. But there is a nuance. The most important disadvantage of dating in a metaverse is that here you interact not with a person, but with their avatar. And that’s very different. You can hear voices, see movements, and so on. But it’s still just a digital image, by which it is very difficult to judge what kind of person someone is. This feature of the metaverses is an ideal ground for catfishing.

This is the name of a type of Internet fraud in which a hacker creates a fake personality. The goals of a catfisher can vary — from a simple desire to attract attention to themselves to real fraud. For now, we can assume that users of metaverses will have a lot of problems due to catfishers shortly.

While metaverses are in their infancy, it’s too early to say that they will replace other dating sites. Moreover, we are talking not only about dating sites and applications but also about video chat services. The latter should be discussed separately. Webcam chat: still the best alternative to dating sites and apps In terms of technology, cam chats can no longer surprise the modern Internet user. But that doesn’t stop them from being great alternatives to dating sites and the metaverses in their current state.

Cam to cam chat allows you to chat with new people via video call every day without any restrictions. At the same time, you immediately see a person, not their avatar, and hear their voice, and intonations, observe gestures and facial expressions. No metaverse today is capable of giving you the same. And cartoon avatars do not even approximately show who the person in front of you is.

On our own, we can recommend the following random cam chats: Tinychat, Camsurf, and CooMeet. They have proven themselves well, offer flexible settings for finding people, are distinguished by effective moderation (in particular https://coomeet.com/camchat), and, unlike metaverses, has already gathered a large audience of users. But most importantly, you only need a webcam or smartphone to use them. No expensive VR glasses or other complicated equipment.

Live cam chats are experiencing a real boom in popularity in the era of the coronavirus pandemic. And for sure, interest in them will not fade away even after the virus is forgotten. We strongly recommend that you discover this dating format and personally evaluate all its advantages. Metaverses are not ready for dating success In the long term, metaverses may indeed fundamentally change the principles of online dating. But so far this has not happened. And it is unlikely that in the coming years we will see any technological breakthroughs in this direction.

We advise you to closely follow the development of the metaverses, but not yet expect too much from them. If you want to communicate with new people on the web as effectively as possible, use cam chats. At the moment, this is the communication option that can best replace live communication, at least to some extent. You can combine cam-to-cam chat with a classic dating site to further expand your potential social circle and meet new people every day.