Meta's pop-up store gives Korea a glimpse of the future

Tech

Published: 26 Oct. 2022, 18:06 Updated: 26 Oct. 2022, 20:18

Meta's pop-up store gives Korea a glimpse of the future

The Meet Meta Pop-up, a pop-up store to help locals get a look at its latest metaverse and Instagram features, opened in in eastern Seoul’s Seongsu-dong, on Wednesday. It runs until Nov. 6. [META]

Meta opened a pop-up store to help locals get a look at its latest metaverse and Instagram features in eastern Seoul’s Seongsu-dong, on Wednesday. It runs until Nov. 6.

Named the Meet Meta Pop-up, the store is divided into two parts: metaverse and Instagram.

On the first floor’s Meet Metaverse section, visitors get to try out Meta’s Quest 2 VR gadget and experience metaverse programs to go shopping or draw 3-D shapes and share them with others.

Shopping takes place on Musinsaverse, a virtual shopping service co-developed by Meta and online shopping mall Musinsa, guided by an avatar version of actor Yoo Ah-in named Muhain.

Visitors can walk around three different virtual Seouls that have been created by three local artists: Joo Jae-bum, Seol Dong-ju and Kim Hee-soo.

Kim Jin-ah, country director of Meta Korea [META]

Olive Seo, the head of marketing for Northeast Asia Meta [META]

“The reason we opened the first pop-up store in Korea is because Meta views Korea as an important market, especially with the metaverse,” Kim Jin-ah, country director of Meta Korea, told the local press.

“Rich with technical advancements and leading content, Korea is the ‘market of tomorrow’ for Meta […] With the pop-up store, we wish to introduce the first steps we’re taking in the metaverse world that we will be pursuing in the coming years.”

The second part of the exhibit focuses on Reels, the short-form video content service offered by Instagram. Visitors can create their own Reels videos with the help of on-site staff and highly Instagrammable backgrounds.

At the end of the pop-up store, a vending machine allows visitors to “tap” to get a free goodie in an offline experience of how people tap to buy merchandise tagged on a post.

Features like “tap-to-shop” are readily used by companies to promote their businesses online, but they may also be the future of shopping in the metaverse world, according to Olive Seo, the head of marketing for Northeast Asia Meta.

“The connection of Instagram and the metaverse is not far away,” Seo said. “The way people enjoy Instagram — such as through Reels and augmented reality — is evolving and that’s the story we wanted to tell with our pop-up store.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]