Lantopia is a community-focused metaverse platform, created by Korean startup Linkdotz, which wants to be “the new future of social media”. Since we communicate with diverse communities in real life – including family, fellow students, coworkers, and many other groups with common interests – Lantopia seeks to build similar communities in the metaverse.
Within Lanptopia, communities are divided by topics (basically common interests) represented by stars. Linktodz has chosen to depict users as planets and make their orbit around the stars, just like our solar system. In Lantopia, users who are interested in the same topic can easily form a community. In addition, tourist attractions, brands, and famous users can become the focus of a community.
Linktodz believes that virtual spaces are key to building virtual communities. Lantopia includes many diverse spaces, such as classrooms, cafes, camping sites, live studios, spaceships, and more.
Users can form a community, communicate freely, and create both new memories with people and spaces. That’s one of the main selling points of the Lantopia experience.
An important second feature is Lantopia’s unique avatars. Users can personalize their character, Lava, with a costume or follow the original storyline with Navi, an avatar with special abilities. Lava and Navi enable diverse experiences in Lantopia. The idea is that If you create an avatar with a style that’s unique to you, you’ll probably enjoy the community even more.
Lantopia’s third big feature is immersive interactive chatting. This lets you voice chat and interact using your avatar in various spaces. Users can find hidden messages and missions in these spaces, and communicate using emojis and voice chat. Linkdotz hopes this gamification will keep users interested in Lantopia.
If you visit a place in real life that also exists as a space in a Lantopia community, you can complete missions there, and collect this real-life place on your planet. If other users spend time in the same space and purchase a related item, you’ll receive a commission. Since community members can earn income together, Linkdotz calls this a “social economy”.
Lantopia was released globally as an open beta in September. Linkdotz has already received positive feedback for the quality of Lantopia’s visual and auditory immersion plus suggestions and ideas for improvements.
At the moment, Lantopia can only be enjoyed as a mobile app (iOS and Android), but the company is planning to expand the experience to a variety of other platforms (like Oculus/Meta).
Lantopia’s revenue model includes selling items for avatars, planets, and places. Users can buy paid items in the Lantopia shop using in-app purchases.
Linkdotz also offers B2B and B2G revenue models that provide customized content for its partners, including an avatar, planet, and star. Exact pricing depends on the partner’s requirements and ranges between $10,000 and $30,000.
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