Meta plunged marketing departments and human resources desks into overdrive when it announced its ambition to bring the metaverse to life in November. It’s not the first company to try to create an immersive digital universe in which for us to shop, share and connect with each other, but it is the most committed and widely used yet. 

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A cursory search of the leading jobs board Indeed reveals 1,300 adverts containing the word “metaverse” in the U.S. alone, so if you didn’t know about it last year, well, by the end of 2022, your next job might just be inside it—or at least related to it. It’ll take around ten years, at least 10,000 people and way more than $10 billion for Meta to fully realize its vision, but, if there’s anything we’ve learned from the pandemic, it’s that long-term processes can be effectively accelerated into a much shorter time frame (hello, Covid-19 vaccines).

 

Expect industries of all sizes—from fashion to film and beyond—to lay the groundwork for their place in the metaverse next year. After all, as we enter the third grisly year of a cruel pandemic, there may be no better time to rely on fantasy and augmented reality.

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- Isabel Togah (Associate News Editor of Forbes Magazine)