Mark Zuckerberg wants to transition Facebook from social media company to a metaverse company.
Facebook creates a new organization in its Reality Labs to focus on metaverse. The new group will connect the VR, AR, and telepresence products of Facebook.
What is Metaverse and Why It Matters?
“The Metaverse is already here as a collection of digital worlds each with its own physics to determine what’s possible within them. The defining quality of the metaverse will be presence — the feeling of really being there with people — and FRL has been focused on building products that deliver presence across digital spaces for years.” Andrew Bosworth
Currently, it’s possible to teleport into a room with another person no matter the physical distance through Portal and Oculus.
However, Facebook believes that achieving the full vision of the Metaverse, a connective tissue must be built to remove the limitations of physics.
The connective tissue will also make it possible to move between spaces with the same ease as going from one room to another.
One of the executives who will be joining the new group is Vishal Shah, who’s currently an executive at Instagram. Jason Rubin will be the head of content for this new organization.
Building a Metaverse
Facebook isn’t the only tech company that’s interested in building a metaverse, which is the successor technology to smartphones and mobile Internet. This technology involves a virtual world where people can play, work and socialize.
This is similar to the VR and AR technologies that Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are developing.
Roblex is an example of metaverse. It’s a platform that lets millions of people gather each day to create, imagine and share experiences in user-generated 3D worlds. This is a children’s game. Its parent company is now valued at more than $4 billion.
Why does Facebook want to Build Metaverse?
The company is investing heavily in AR and VR technologies. Mark believes that they can provide the possibility of controlling its hardware platform. In that case, Facebook doesn’t have to follow the rules of Apple and Google.
Mark told his employees that the future of Facebook is beyond building connected social apps. He said that the social media company would build an interconnected set of experiences that you can only see in a sci-fi movie.
In an interview by the Verge, Mark is hoping that over the next five years, Facebook will transition from a social media company to being a metaverse company.
The metaverse can bring enormous opportunities to creators and artists. People who wish to work or own homes far from the city can take advantage of this technology. You can also benefit from it if you live in a place where education and recreation opportunities are limited.
It’s generally the next best thing to a teleportation device.
“But the metaverse isn’t just virtual reality. It’s going to be accessible across all of our different computing platforms; VR and AR, but also PC, and also mobile devices and game consoles. ” – Mark Zuckerberg
