Flitto CEO shares insights on metaverse platform

The CEO of language data platform startup Flitto, Simon Lee, also known as Lee Jung-soo, shared his insights on how his company has integrated the metaverse into their everyday work, during an event held by the Corea Image Communication Institute Tuesday.

The translation platform’s employees are currently using the beta version of the metaverse platform Metapolis, created by Korean real estate brokerage startup Zigbang, as a virtual office.

“From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. around 140 people work on this metaverse platform,” Lee said at the event held at the residence of the French ambassador to Korea, Philippe Lefort. Flitto employees can also choose to work at the office in person.

During Lee’s presentation on Tuesday, the CEO demonstrated how his employees are using the metaverse platform to work from home.

His avatar, which was wearing a blue dress, walked up to the office building, passes the security gate and gets on the elevator up to Flitto’s office, just like he would going to work in real life.

When his avatar walks up to another avatar in the office, a pop-up window of a video call with that person appears on the screen, allowing them to have a face-to-face conversation.

Lee said all employees have to keep their cameras on during work hours to make this feature possible.

“When they leave the (desk) for more than 30 minutes during work hours, our HR team receives a notice that the employees have been away from their keyboards,” he added.

The CEO explained that these features help employees stay productive while working remotely from home.

“When people think of metaverse, they tend to think of only convenience, but the platform that we are using is both convenient and inconvenient. That is what makes working remotely from home natural,” he said.

Lee added that Metapolis does not include a messaging feature for the same reason.

“I asked the Zigbang CEO why it does not have this feature and he said it is because we do not work that way in person. We talk face to face and if they want to message each other then they can use other platforms, just like how they do it in real life,” he said.

Also, the CEO said he received many positive feedbacks from employees on the use of metaverse, especially from those who live far from the Gangnam office in Seoul.

“Say there is an employee that lives in Ilsan. If you ask them if they want to commute to work which takes about an hour and a half or work from home via this platform, they choose the latter,” he said, referring to the city in Gyeonggi Province.

Established in 2012, the translation platform collects language data in the form of text, audio and images and offers users translations done by artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing or professionals. It supports 25 different languages, including English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malayan, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)