Lighthouse is building the open metaverse navigation engine, a unified interface empowering users to search for places, events, friends, creators, and experiences across and within multiple virtual worlds.
Bold tagline! "The Google of the Metaverse"
I don't even know what I'd type into such a search engine — or have any idea what I'd expect to find.
If I search for "coffee", what should appear in the results? If I search for "Fortnite", will I get to play in a metaverse that's similar to the game?
Seems like a different kind of search problem! How do I evaluate if the results are any good?
@chrismessina Hey Chris - Jo here, co-founder of Lighthouse. Thanks for your comment!
Yeah definitely a bold tagline and obviously Google is super multifaceted as a company so the intent was more to hint at their mission of "organizing the world's information", than doing any universal claim about sophistication and impact.
Lighthouse indexes thousands of experiences from many different virtual worlds and unifies them under one roof. It makes finding immersive 3D content closer to traditional search in that you can browse through a bunch of spaces from one access point vs having to enter each ecosystem one by one.
I actually searched "Coffee" for you on our portal (https://lighthouse.world/search?...) and you can actually see that creators built coffee related experiences inside The Sandbox, Voxels, Decentraland and Spatial - all different virtual worlds that have little to do with one another.
The Spatial one is pretty cool if you want to try it up: https://lighthouse.world/details...
Regarding evaluating if search results are "good", it depends on what you mean: quality, functionality, following guidelines (i.e. moderation). There's a bunch of things going into it and it's all stuff we are approaching from different angle.
Anyhow thanks for engaging with the post and more than happy to address any follow-up!
@chrismessina Another good one, and tbh, we are very unsophisticated / early in optimizing the content we present to users. It's a big focus of ours next year (our CTO was actually leading the ML team in charge of recommendations at an enterprise search company named Coveo before Lighthouse).
As our own algos become better and ranking relevant content, then investing in SEO in 2023 for creators will become increasingly relevant. The direct angle for them will be to improve their tags, descriptions, picture quality and overall create richer profiles, just like you have to do on YouTube, Airbnb, etc
Great work @benjamin_couture, @bjjxyz and the whole Lighthouse team. This is exactly what the open metaverse needs. More navigation, more openness and more collaboration.
And super nice to see some MetaMundo spaces and models listed too.
Have LOVED playing with this product - crazy how far it's come since the beta launched a few months ago too!
Easy to imagine how this becomes a massive pillar of the future of the internet and thrilled to have been involved from the beginning.
Hey there, Product Hunters! 👋
My name is Benjamin, the first employee at Lighthouse. I joined just under a year ago, when we started out with a simple question: "Can we build the Google Maps of the metaverse?" Since then, we evolved into something much greater where we not only index places, but also where your friends are, what events are taking place, and what groups are doing together.
There’s been quite a lot of (polarizing) talk about the metaverse. What does it mean? Who wants it? Is it going to be fun or dystopic? With Meta as a de facto ambassador for the space, some negative narratives have understandably been building up over the last year. Despite all the noise, we are convinced that the metaverse is a huge step forward for our digital future. To us, the metaverse is the simple idea that technology, common standards, and open frameworks can empower greater, if not endless, interoperability between real-time 3D ecosystems.
Now, what exactly is Lighthouse? 💪
Lighthouse is a metaverse navigation engine that indexes thousands of experiences across more than 20+ virtual worlds (and growing!) and make them searchable from a unified interface.
What can you concretely do with on Lighthouse.world today? 👀
- Find your friends: Lighthouse tells you exactly where your friends are across and within our indexed virtual worlds (with consent granted by users first, obviously). No more wandering around for hours trying to find where the party's at. We make it simple for you via our free browser extension.
- Discover experiences: Because the metaverse is built upon user-generated content, hundreds of experiences are added every day in our indexed words. Stay up-to-date on the latest trending places as well as the most anticipated events without constantly monitoring the development of dozens of ecosystems.
- Create a Gate: The metaverse is a social-first experience, and we believe that its search engine should follow the same direction. Lighthouse enables users to create profiles (“Gates”) where they can pin their favorite experiences, add their own places and spaces, and build relationships with their friends. Gates are a great way to store metaverse memories, such as videos, pictures, etc.
- Connect with creators: Finally, the metaverse would not exist without the creators behind it. Follow your favorite creators, interact with them in their spaces, and soon, share with them some of the memories you’ve captured while interacting in and with their creations.
Whether you are sold on the metaverse or still skeptical about it, Lighthouse is worth trying. We’ve thrown a lot of love and energy into it over the last year and we hope that you’ll find some time over the holidays to come cruise across the 3D web with us! 🚀
P.S. All PH users who interact with this post and create a Gate on Lighthouse will receive an on-depth, gorgeously designed metaverse report that we’ve co-written with many of our friends in the industry, including the CEOs of Animoca Brands, Ready Player Me, The Sandbox, and others.
P.P.S. Don’t forget to visit the portal and download the free browser extension:
https://lighthouse.world/https://extension.lighthouse.world
Super excited for the PH community to take a look at what we're up to. Please share feedback, questions, and comment on what you think!
Ben 🤞
Hey, Product Hunt!
I recently started using Lighthouse and I have been extremely impressed with the platform. I have found it to be an incredibly valuable tool for discovering and navigating different Metaverse experiences.
One of the standout features of Lighthouse is its powerful navigation platform, which allows users to easily search for items across and within different virtual worlds.
I also appreciate the social aspect of Lighthouse, which allows me to create friend groups, build my own Gates and followings, and pursue Quests with other users. This has made exploration an intrinsically social experience and has added an extra layer of enjoyment to my virtual adventures.
In terms of mobility, Lighthouse's goal of creating frictionless bridges between different virtual worlds is an exciting prospect. The idea of landing places replacing landing pages and making it easy to navigate between different virtual spaces is something I am looking forward to experiencing in the near future.
Overall, I am extremely happy with my experience using Lighthouse and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to explore and discover new experiences in the open metaverse.
Cheers, James
Lighthouse first product released this week focus on social and discovery. Their "find a friend" feature is great !
Their product roadmap is visionary, yet realistic and focusing on user experience.