Introducing Dreamwave Microverses

In early 2020 we launched Dreamwave, a platform created by the Active Theory team that facilitates virtual events, festivals and online gatherings.

Since then, these Dreamwave experiences have been attended by over a million people, with brands including Hulu, Cardano, Sundance Film Festival, Porter Robinson and Hubspot all partnering to create online spaces for customers and fans.

But many of these online spaces aren’t just one off event activations. They are persistent digital spaces that communities can return to over and over. These spaces are part of the Metaverse. These spaces are microverses.

Dreamwave is a web-based platform that creates microverses for brands and artists.

The Metaverse is an extensive, connected online world that combines aspects of social media, online gaming, AR, VR, ecommerce and other digital platforms. Many see this concept as a natural evolution of the internet and discussions of the metaverse are in the forefront of tech publications with Facebook’s recent transition to Meta.

Within the Metaverse are numerous digital experiences. Having spent many years building ‘microsite’ activations for brands and artists, we’re seeing the web evolving to become more immersive and connected.

At Dreamwave, we’re evolving the concept of a microsite into something new: a microverse. These microverses are immersive, socially driven destinations within the Metaverse that can be purposely designed to envelop the user in a branded world.

Dreamwave microverses are immersive, socially driven destinations within the Metaverse.

This shift is backed up by data. From previous activations, we’ve found the average time a user spends in a Dreamwave Microverse is 13 minutes and 21 seconds. This is nearly 18 times a standard microsite that averages 45 seconds from each user.

Microverse: 20 Years of Xbox Museum

An example of this is our recent microverse for Xbox’s 20th anniversary. In this experience, users join together in a connected, immersive museum that showcases consoles, games and moments over Xbox’s 20 year history. Using personalized Xbox data this experience goes a step further by allowing users to login and generate a personalized museum featuring their own stories and achievements.

At the Xbox Museum microverse, attendees can explore the history of Xbox together or dive into a personalized museum generated from their own account data.

These microverses are a great first step for brands and artists who want to create spaces online within the Metaverse. And this opportunity goes beyond simply product launches and virtual events. It’s a way to foster long term relationships with fans and communities all over the world, regardless of geographical boundaries.

Microverse: Secret Sky Music Festival

With EDM producer Porter Robinson, we created a virtual auditorium for Secret Sky Festival which ran online in 2020 and 2021, attracting hundreds of thousands of attendees and millions of streams. This was not only connected with YouTube and Twitch live streams on the day, but months later the digital auditorium re-opened with fans pouring back in online to watch Second Sky Festival in Oakland. Through a Dream Portal installation at the physical festival, we were able to connect digital attendees with physical attendees to chat and hangout while enjoying the festival together all around the world.

Virtual attendees and in-person festival goers could connect at Second Sky’s Dream Portal, which leveraged the Secret Sky microverse built earlier in the year.

As the metaverse is open and available to all, an important aspect is building experiences in technologies available to as many people as possible. At Dreamwave, our microverses are created in web-based technology, meaning anyone can access them by simply clicking a link. These browser based experiences can be accessed across devices including mobile, desktop, tablet and even virtual reality. This is particularly important given much of the world is operating mobile-first, often with poor internet bandwidth.

Microverse: Cardano Summit 2021

An example of this is the microverse we created with Cardano. As a blockchain network, Cardano has a mission that shares our values of global technology access. At Cardano Summit 2021, key notes and presentations from 13 physical events around the world were live streamed into the virtual platform, allowing remote attendees to watch content, network and explore together.

The Cardano microverse was introduced on the back of a turtle floating through an endless ocean, a nod to the mission of environmental sustainability.

While the metaverse conversation evolves, our microverses are here to stay. For brands, for artists, for communities and for products, we’re excited to keep building so stay tuned for more soon.