Paris Hilton, The US Reality TV Star Launches Metaverse Business On Roblox

Paris Hilton, the most famous celebrity of our times is no longer just a celebrity. She has transformed herself into a digital powerhouse. Who would even imagine that Paris Hilton will come this far and even play a role in the Metaverse ecosystem?

Well, here she is.

With the help of her husband Reum and Gersh, a former Walt Disney Co and Time Inc executive, she has created a media enterprise around one of pop culture’s original influencers.

Paris Hilton commands as much as $1 million a night working as a celebrity DJ, entertaining partiers at clubs in China, Dubai, and on the Spanish vacation island of Ibiza.

Hilton has created an island in the online virtual world, dubbed "Paris World", where visitors can explore digital replicas of her Beverly Hills estate and its dog mansion.

Users (aka visitors) can stroll the boardwalk inspired by the carnival wedding celebration, she and her husband Carter Reum hosted earlier this year at the Santa Monica Pier in California, and explore the island in a luxury sports car or Sunray yacht.

This New Year’s Eve, she will be playing an electronic set for the revelers who drop by a venue of a different sort – her virtual island on Roblox. Like other virtual hangouts, Paris World will collect small payments for purchasing virtual clothing or booking a ride on a jet-ski.

Hilton, 40, joins a clutch of celebrities and brands rushing to embrace the Metaverse, a broad term referring to a persistent virtual world. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg popularized the term this year when he renamed the company to Meta to emphasize the Metaverse’s central role to the company’s future.

Global brands such as Tommy Hilfiger have launched a line of digital ready-to-wear fashion for Roblox avatars. Nike opened a virtual world called Nikeland in November, where visitors can play dodgeball with friends, lace on a pair of virtual Air Force 1 sneakers, and win medals. Rappers Lil Nas X and Travis Scott have also held concerts last year for millions of virtual concertgoers.

For the socialite and reality TV-star turned entrepreneur, Paris World is the latest venture launched by her new media company, 11:11 Media. She and veteran media executive Bruce Gersh aim to capitalize on the burgeoning creator economy, in which celebrities like Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James leverage their influence to produce films, television shows and podcasts, brand marketing and to sell merchandise.

She has leveraged her gossip pages notoriety into 19 different consumer product lines, including perfumes, apparel, lingerie, cosmetics, sunglasses watches, shoes, handbags, and jewelry, which together generated an estimated $4 billion in revenue over the past decade.

11:11 Media has launched "This Is Paris", a podcast in which she speaks candidly about her family and friends, and a pair of reality TV series, Cooking With Paris on Netflix and Paris In Love, about her engagement and marriage to Reum.

Hilton has also tapped into the mania for non-fungible tokens, collaborating with designer Blake Kathryn to sell three unique pieces of digital art — one of which fetched in excess of $1.1 million, according to online auction platform Nifty Gateway.

According to Gersh, "The final piece of the digital space is the Metaverse. And that there’s a real opportunity for Paris to influence, even at a younger level than who her core customer is. We’ve built a fantastic, whimsical world that we believe her fans and new fans will just love"

Final Thoughts

All these points in only one direction - the mass adoption of Metaverse. The single most reason, I believe, people will enter the Metaverse is because of its entertainment value. It has been proven all along; that games, music, art, entertainment, are the main reasons why technology innovations go mainstream.

Imagine what good the smartphones be if there was no Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Apple Music, Spotify?

Similarly, the next set of companies that will attract a billion users will be entities that create and populate the Metaverses. If we are not building Metaverses now, we are going to be left behind. It's time to take the shovel and start digging.