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 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.
Hilton 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, stroll a boardwalk
inspired by the neon carnival wedding
celebration she and 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.
Like other virtual hangouts, Paris World will
collect small payments for purchasing virtual
clothing or booking a ride on a jet-ski.
“For me, the metaverse is somewhere that you can
do everything you can do in real life in the
digital world,” said Hilton, who worked to
create aspects of her globe-trotting life for
fans. “Not everybody gets to experience that, so
that’s what we’ve been working together on over
the past year -- giving them all my inspirations
of what I want in that world.”
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 he renamed the company to Meta to
emphasize the metaverse's central role to the
company's future.
Brands such as Tommy Hilfiger brand 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.
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 Hilton is most widely known for
the reality television show “The Simple Life,”
in which she and celebrity socialite, Nicole
Richie, ditched their limos to travel America
aboard a Greyhound bus.
Hilton says the dumb blonde act was a put-on, “I
was always in on the joke, but I knew exactly
what I was doing. Behind the scenes, I was
building a brand.”
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, the company disclosed.
Investment-banker husband Reum introduced Hilton
to Gersh, a former Walt Disney Co and Time Inc
executive, to create a media enterprise around
one of pop culture's original influencers.
Since those early discussions, 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.
“The final piece of the digital space is the
metaverse,” said Gersh. “ We think 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.”
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski; editing by
Kenneth Li and Nick Zieminski)
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