This morning, Facebook (now Meta) Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a new revenue opportunity for the platform. An Avatar Store for Facebook, Instagram and Messenger will allow users to buy digital clothes to style your avatar.
This is a pre-cursor to the bigger vision at Meta, where they’re hoping to create mainstream virtual reality products that allows you to interact with others. How you’re represented in that virtual world will be based on this same Avatar Store and your purchases today, should follow through to that experience.
We’ve seen early versions of this with the Meta-owned Oculus, but the bigger question is, can I submit a work-related expense for buying a digital suit for my business meetings?
While many won’t ever spend a dollar on digital clothing, we know from the gaming industry that this can be a massive revenue opportunity. Gamers spend hundreds of dollars upgrading the visual appearance of their player in games like Fortnite, Roblox and Pokemon, while Microsoft’s Xbox Avatar Store has been around for years, offering no advantage in-game, but can be used to express yourself among friends and fellow gamers.
With the Meta platforms holding a userbase in the Billions, even if 1% of users start buying digital clothes and accessories for their Avatar, this will be big for Meta.
We also shouldn’t forget about the massive business-to-business opportunity on offer here either. If you’re a clothing brand, you’d love to have our products not only featured in the Avatar Store, but also be worn by Facebook Avatars and seen by millions of users, there will be big dollars thrown at this.
