Ornella Hernandez

<div id="highlights-block_6344948abaa27" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>FlickPlay has partnered with the Downtown Santa Monica District and signer Katy Perry, and others</li>
 <li>“At the end of the day, it&#8217;s all about what you own,” says FlickPlay founder</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Think TikTok and Pokemon Go, but add in NFTs. That’s FlickPlay — a mobile application that combines the user experience of a short-form video social media platform with an element of augmented reality (AR).&nbsp;



Behind the app is founder Pierina Merino, who believes that the digital collectibles we own are storytelling and identity-building tools.&nbsp;



FlickPlay users across three dozen US cities can use the AR camera to create videos and capture NFTs or Flickys — part of the “FlickyGang” avatar collection developed in partnership with The Sandbox. The more NFTs collected, the more rewards earned that unlock redeemable physical items at retailers and locations throughout the city district.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="512" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png" alt="" class="wp-image-34126" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=2048 2048w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PRESS-BANNER-1-1024x512.png?w=50 50w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>


FlickPlay was recently <a href="https://www.flickplay.co/post/manage-your-blog-from-your-live-site" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">chosen</a> to be one of the six companies to join the current cohort of the 2022 Disney Accelerator Program, a business development program.



Merino spoke with Blockworks about FlickPlay’s long-term vision and its recent decision to onboard NFT brands including Pudgy Penguins NFT project, Snoop Dogg’s The Doggies from The Sandbox, and Spanish artist Edgar Plans’ Lil’ Heroes.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Blockworks: Why did you choose to work with these particular NFT brands? How do you evaluate creators?



Merino: FlickPlay wants to engage with communities and creators that are truly proponents of Web3 and who are genuinely interested in evolving the use case for NFTs and metaverse driven endeavors. We want to work with creators who have cultivated a robust community of Web3 enthusiasts that are heavily involved in solidifying their brands and pushing beyond the JPEG narrative.&nbsp;



Blockworks: How can FlickPlay help users grow their social status and measure the value and utility of their NFTs?



Merino: So our vision is to become the platform that connects digital [intellectual property] to the real world and that overlays a digital layer where Web3 IP and Web2 IP come together and interact within one seamless ecosystem. At the end of the day, it&#8217;s all about what you own, and how you choose to tell your story can amplify your connection to those items, to their potential utility.



By creating videos on FlickPlay, the ranking of your NFTs will inherently increase based on the likes, views and Flickcoins the videos receive. This allows NFT holders to speculate not only on the rarity of the NFT collection but also on the NFT’s social ranking.&nbsp;



Owners can position their NFT from a collection as number one in the social ranking. This means that communities will essentially define the value of their NFTs. This is the next generation of content creators. This feature will also allow for communities to storytell with their NFTs in the real world, flexing their NFTs in their favorite locations.&nbsp;



Blockworks: What are some of the challenges with traditional social media platforms that FlickPlay addresses and hopes to improve on?&nbsp;



Merino: FlickPlay has always been authentically involved in creating a space for Web3 and NFT enthusiasts to congregate and push community interaction beyond popular forums like Twitter, Telegram and Discord. Through FlickPlay NFT projects, communities, and creators can truly bring their NFTs to life, grow the popularity and value of their collection through social engagement and create new levels of utility through token-gated competitions and leaderboards.&nbsp;



Blockworks: What advancements need to happen to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology for more people to start using it on a daily basis?



Merino: AR needs to have a seamless experience to become fully integrated for everyday use with a purpose. What is encouraging users to engage with AR overlays? We already see the use of filters and special geotags on popular social platforms, so the focus needs to be on evolving the technology and software that goes along with augmented reality to make it more efficient for everyday use.



I&#8217;ve been very curious to see how the overall ecosystem is thinking about it — what tools are being introduced? What underlying technology or integrations have been built to power the consumer experience?&nbsp;



We shouldn&#8217;t be thinking about how we&#8217;re going to make people sit at their desks and just be in goggles the whole day. That might happen within a few years from now, but that&#8217;s not how we&#8217;re going to hit mass adoption.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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augumented reality

Q&A: Pierina Merino on Social Utility in a Web3 World

David Canellis

<div id="highlights-block_628e7fb4379dd" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Respondents were more positive about remote education and digital entertainment in the metaverse than digital asset trading</li>
 <li>The metaverse could still demand real-world intervention when it comes to NFT-related fraud</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Half of adults surveyed in 29 countries said they’re excited about interacting with the metaverse — with bullish sentiment skewing higher in emerging nations, where citizens were late to the Web2 revolution. 



That’s according to a new poll from Paris-based market research firm Ipsos on behalf of inter-governmental body World Economic Forum, which is currently hosting its annual Davos conference in Switzerland. The metaverse is proving a hot topic among panelists.



More than two-thirds of respondents from China, India, Peru were positive towards an eventual hyper-connected metaverse than those from developed nations such as Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Belgium, France, and Germany – where fewer than one-third were happy about the concept.



Ipsos’ sample size was relatively small: 21,005 online adults under the age of 75. Still, 80% of respondents were familiar with “virtual reality;” 61% knew about “augmented reality;” and 53% had heard the term “metaverse.”



The prospect of the metaverse is somewhat contentious in tech. Gaming companies like Roblox already have widely popular metaverses in which players can explore centralized digital realms.



Meta, formerly Facebook, on the other hand, hopes to roll out a tangible extended reality in which users control an avatar tied to physical identities, allowing players to meet up in virtual spaces for work and play.&nbsp;



The tech giant has flagged its intent to support NFTs and other digital collectibles, although other proponents envision an interconnected virtual world where blockchain-powered digital identities transcend the walled gardens that have defined Web2.&nbsp;



“Familiarity and favorability toward the new technologies are also significantly higher among younger adults, those with a higher level of education, and men than they are among older adults, those without a college-level education, and women,” Ipsos wrote in a <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-advisor-metaverse-extended-reality-may-2022" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blog</a> post.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="512" height="288" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-22059" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=512 512w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-2.jpg?w=50 50w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" /></figure></div>



During a Davos <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2022/sessions/making-the-metaverse">panel</a> Wednesday focusing on metaverse developments, Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox described the concept as a way of transitioning from 2D digital environments to 3D experiences.&nbsp;



“When you think about the current internet, we have flat pages served by screens,” Cox said. “One of the most important trends in computing moved them from a basement to our desktop, to our pocket. We [Meta] believe, as an industry, as the metaverse gets closer – eyes, hands, speech, and keyboard input goes away, peering at screens in our pockets goes away.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Education more compelling than crypto trading in the metaverse</h3>



But exactly how blockchain and cryptocurrency fit into the emerging metaverse concept remains unclear.&nbsp;



Decentraland and rival Sandbox are two examples of crypto-powered platforms embracing the idea, offering crypto users the opportunity to acquire their own slices of the metaverse in the form of land plots on which they can build their own structures. Casinos inhabit these metaverses, giving users a use-case for digital assets.&nbsp;



The games themselves don’t run exclusively on distributed ledgers, but land deeds and other assets are managed by blockchains. Rapper Snoop Dogg is setting up in Sandbox’s metaverse while Wall Street bank JPMorgan has opened its own “lounge” in Decentraland.



But there must also be some rules governing our metaverse experiences, said Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Omar Al Olama. The UAE has been an early adopter of the nation-state-driven metaverse, facilitating its first virtual wedding in Decentraland last week.



“There are different kinds of risks we must pay attention to,” said Al Olama. “Financial transactions which happen in the real world for goods bought in the metaverse such as Bored Apes – if you actually pay money for that but you don’t get it in the metaverse, someone has to pay for that with an agreement on how that’s enforced.”



And so, Ipsos asked respondents: “How much do you agree or disagree that, over the next 10 years, the development of the following metaverse applications using extended reality will significantly change the way people live?”



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="512" height="260" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-22058" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=512 512w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/davos-metaverse-in-line.jpg?w=50 50w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" /></figure></div>



Two-thirds somewhat or strongly agreed increased access to virtual learning via the metaverse would significantly change their daily lives. About the same number said entertainment, such movies and concerts, would do the trick.



Trading of digital assets such as cryptocurrency and NFTs ranked much lower. Just 52% of respondents agreed that metaverse-related digital asset markets would significantly change lives – that rose to 74% for adults polled from Peru and South Africa and dropped to 29% in France.&nbsp;