Along the way, consumers have developed a nose for BS, which has made honesty the new price of entry.
“If you’re not authentic, people don’t want to follow you,” Greene said. “There are a lot of celebrities who haven’t been able to keep up, because that inauthenticity has been very glaring in a lot of their work.”
It may be tempting to place Hilton—one of the original celebrity influencers—into that batch of has-beens. But Hilton has held onto her base and shared some reasons why.
She stressed the importance of influencers taking the lead role in everything they create. “I don’t like to put my name on anything unless I am there and involved in the full creative,” she said. Hilton also believes that influencers need to remain relatable and humble: “I’ve always been someone who could have fun with my image and laugh at myself.”
How do the Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses fit into that? If authenticity is de rigueur for influencers, Hilton believes it’s important to remove any barriers between creator and content—like, say, that smartphone. The glasses feature a built-in lens that lets wearers take photos or video clips from eye level, leaving their hands free to create.
“Imagine if [Paris] was DJing, holding her phone up between herself and the crowd,” said Scott. “It would have created a barrier. [Now] that barrier is gone.”
While the Ray-Ban Meta glasses are generating buzz for Meta Reality Labs, Meta is still contending with an anemic adoption rate for its Facebook metaverse overall. Monthly users of its social VR app Horizon Worlds reportedly hovers around 200,000. It’s an issue that, when raised by an audience member, Scott did not brush aside.
“We’re still figuring it out,” she said. “The idea is to create an open ecosystem that brands and partners, just like they use Instagram and Facebook today, can use Horizon. We’re still building it.”
