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14 : 02 : 22

Los Angeles – For just £41 ($56, €49) a night, two lucky fans will be able to stay in actress Issa Rae’s California home for the weekend. Partnering with home rental platform Airbnb, the actress is treating her guests to a curated itinerary that has been designed to uplift Black businesses and communities in the area.

With South Los Angeles playing an integral role in Issa Rae’s Emmy-nominated television programme, Insecure, fans will be able to experience the local neighbourhood, which features as a backdrop to the show. Organised to coincide with the Super Bowl weekend, guests will also be given a guide that includes Rae’s favourite bookshop, clothing store, cafés and more. Inside the home, artworks by local Black artists are also on display.

As part of the initiative, £368,268 ($500,000, €438,723) will be donated to South Los Angeles-based charities that serve under-represented communities in the area. Boosting local businesses and empowering Black travellers, this temporary campaign shows how Traveltainment can align itself with Black History Travel.

New York – Distancing itself from the aesthetics and ethos of other technology companies, OpenWeb has unveiled a rebranding that hearkens back to the analogue era.

Focusing on ways to improve online conversation and build healthier discourse between netizens, OpenWeb provides publishers such as Hearst, Yahoo! and News Corp with integrated comments sections and chat forums. Its new look eschews modern web aesthetics for a brand identity that references nineteenth-century typography and newspaper headlines.

Designed by strategy and communications company Collins, the result is a more tactile alternative to the cold, sleek identities that dominate much of the technology industry. ‘From the beginning of the project, we believed OpenWeb was not a ‘tech’ company – it’s a conversation company. So not feeling or looking like an interchangeable, shiny tech company is exactly where we needed to be,’ explains Megan Bowker, design director at Collins.

Separating itself from the social media platforms and tech companies that capitalise on the culture wars to maximise engagement, the rebranding helps align OpenWeb with the principles of Veritas Media.

Just like other digital platforms and innovations before it, new research predicts that the metaverse will soon integrate itself into people’s daily lives and routines. According to a study conducted by Gartner, 25% of people will spend at least one hour in the metaverse daily by 2026.

The metaverse – which can be defined as a collective digital space where people socialise, work and play – is anticipated to become an integral part of business models. With growing consumer curiosity, companies are finding inventive ways to enter this nascent realm and to translate their businesses in the virtual world.

‘From attending virtual classrooms to buying digital land and constructing virtual homes, these activities are currently being conducted in separate environments. Eventually, they will take place in a single environment – the metaverse – with multiple destinations across technologies and experiences,’ explains Marty Resnick, vice-president of research at Gartner.

Although metaverse literacy and adoption are on the rise, the report cautions against companies investing too heavily too quickly as the market is changing fast. To learn how to competitively position your company in the metaverse, readers can consult our new Meta-tainment Report.