Here's how the Metaverse is changing the future of work
Will the next Discord, Slack, or Zoom be a metaverse company?
Hey all, I hope you enjoyed my previous issue on Facebook’s entry into the Metaverse and why it’s so important. From my knowledge of this timeline, most people weren’t talking about the future of work in relation to the Metaverse.
Now, it’s time that we discuss work. When we talk about the Metaverse, we often like to focus on games and new forms of communication with each other. After all, it’s exciting to talk about new games that we can all play. We should also focus on the vast potential of the Metaverse’s capabilities of changing the future of work.
The Covid-19 Pandemic and Remote Work’s Rise
The Covid-19 pandemic forced many businesses to adopt a very nascent form of work known as Remote Work. Remote work involves a distributed workforce that typically works from home or at another location and has no central office. All communications are done via technologies like Slack or Zoom. This concept was not foreign to Silicon Valley as Twitter fully embraced the idea on their Q4 earnings call a few months prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Thanks to Covid-19, Remote Work has entered its climax and is now becoming the norm for many. However, in remote work’s current offerings, services like Zoom and Slack are giving rise to “Zoom Fatigue” which is a form of burnout and tiredness from using remote work software. It can severely impact work performance by straining workers’ mental health via stressors and can be exhausting. Remote work has also removed the social aspect of work which is critical to team performance, often accounting for more than 50% of positive changes in communication patterns.
Now, the initial dreamers and companies that pioneered the work from home revolution have become the incumbents and are ripe for disruption from new developing groups of dreamers and companies.
Branch.gg and a new Discord
Branch.gg is a spatial world for work and play. In English, it means that this is a virtual world where you can walk around like you’re in a video game. You can also be heard by peers around you, walking through and interfacing with people.
You can turn “on” or “off” your microphone and camera. It’s similar to being in the same office with your co-workers, and you can have meetings in different parts of the land—no one else can hear you unless they walk in. You can even lock the doors if you want! This tool also comes with the unique ability to design the plot however you wish, you can build an office campus or a school if you’d like. It’s all possible with Branch.
Someone could use Branch to build entire virtual communities, make a school feel more connected for students, and conduct virtual negotiations in a way that feels more human. Furthermore, there’s also the acorns system which is ripe for gamifying the work experience by placing incentives for accomplishing tasks the quickest. Companies like Branch are exactly why I started this Substack and Twitter—to find extreme innovation before anyone else and explain it in simple words.
Now, people often view the Metaverse as something that’s largely theoretical and something that will happen in the future instead of something presently happening. However, in the case of Branch this isn’t true. Some of the largest companies in the world are using Branch to communicate with each other in remote work.
Branch is also backed by famed angel investor Naval (you guys know who he is), Sahil Lavingia (CEO of Gumroad), Joshua Browder (CEO of DoNotPay), Scott Belsky (Veteran Adobe executive) and many more.
Teamflow and a new Slack
Teamflow is similar to Branch in the sense that it’s also a spatial world where you can build your own virtual office. Although, Teamflow is specifically geared towards workplace teams and doesn’t boast a large amount of clients.
However, Teamflow appears to be changing the game by specifically incorporating tools for organization into the software—which is something that Branch doesn’t necessarily focus on. It also has also built-in tools for happy hours and to just relax. Initially, Branch was intended to be used as something like Zoom or Discord as a communication tool.
Teamflow has recently raised $35 mil USTT from leading tech investors Coatue (Doordash, Snapchat, Reddit, UiPath), Menlo Ventures (Uber, Tumblr, Roku, Periscope), and Battery Ventures (Clownbase (Coinbase), Wayfair, Groupon, Dollar Shave Club, Fastly, Sprinklr). Overall, solid backers with an acceptable product.
Branch appears to be the best equipped to handle this change with their intuitive product and large array of customers. Furthermore, the business is also not specifically just for b2b applications, it’s b2c as well. You can build unique spatial chatrooms for hobby purposes or whatever you want.
Like I said prior, Branch reminds me of Discord due to their design and unique product. I believe that Branch can greatly gamify the workplace and forever change work adapting concepts from books like Superbetter.
Looking forward, it’s evident that the metaverse is here to stay and that many of the top companies in the world are openly embracing it for their workforce to create a new definition of how “work” should be done. A new kind of work that is more connected and distributed to the workforce.
Here's how the Metaverse is changing the future of work
Fuck. You made this really easy to read and understand. Thanks, fren