The term is “metaverse”. No Facebook executive Mark Zuckerberg mentioned this new fashion word of trend technology during your company’s latest earnings call. By metaverse, Zuckerberg meant the next phase of the Internet, where our physical world combines with the virtual, creating a whole new environment in the process. He thinks this is how we will work, play and live in the future. In fact, Zuckerberg is so convinced of the concept that he has a complete plan to turn his trillion-dollar social media company into a metaverse company in the coming years.
So how does Facebook get Zuckerberg’s vision of a “metaverse” of virtual reality? Or is it just a bold dream now? We explain it.
Facebook wants to go beyond smartphones: the iPhone came back in 2007, and while Apple still sells it in the millions and will continue to do so, it’s clear that tech companies are now looking for the growth of smartphones. Zuckerberg’s alternative reality combines the real world with the digital imagination and the smartphone has no place in this mix. You need a new type of device, probably a virtual reality (VR) headset from the era produced by Zuckerberg’s Oculus.
Horizon Workrooms is a first step towards a virtual reality “metaverse”: with Oculus, Zuckerberg’s plan is to jump directly from smartphones and laptops to virtual reality headsets as a way to engage billions of users with Facebook in a more immersive way. Although Facebook has had limited success in getting RVs to major consumers despite accumulating billions of dollars, the company took the first major step last week to expand the potential of this technology to launch Horizon Workrooms, a VR version of Zoom and Slack.
The basic idea here is to abandon the old style of video conferencing using a webcam and instead use a virtual reality headset (e.g. Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2) to meet in a virtual reality space. Facebook presents its Horizon Workrooms as a new way to interact with colleagues, but of course, in virtual reality. Workers can create avatars (those cartoon-like characters in 3D animated workspaces) and communicate with coworkers in virtual meetings. While Horizon Workrooms continues to do beta testing, Facebook already allows its Oculus Quest 2 users to test the app.
While not yet fully Metaverse, Horizon seems like a natural expansion of Zuckerberg’s strategy to introduce RV as the next computing platform. Zuckerberg himself acknowledged that it will take a few years to develop the metaverse experience, but the launch of Workrooms in the midst of the pandemic when everyone is remotely connected shows that our workplace is changing. People will continue to work remotely, with some restrictions, after things get formalized. But the office needs to be rethought, and that’s why it needs to shift to immersive technology. Workrooms, in a way, take everyone to the same virtual room, regardless of physical distance. Unlike a Zoom meeting, where you have the option to turn off the camera or microphone and go under the radar while the meeting is still on, with Horizon you can view and interact with your colleagues ’virtual avatars. You can see them standing, making a presentation, who raised their hands at the meeting and instantly know who is not there, even though their avatar is.
… but Facebook is an advertising company: Facebook spends billions on the metaverse and there’s a reason behind it. While Facebook will sell the hardware through Oculus VR headsets, the real money will go to advertising.
Zuckerberg has already said that advertising on metaverse is the core of the strategy, but how will Facebook introduce commerce into this digital world?
If you’ve ever heard of Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite, you’ll know how these platforms and games sell digital products to users. For example, the Gucci Dionysus bag was recently sold for 350,000 Robux (approximately $ 4,115) and was only available on the online gaming platform Roblox. Gucci’s presence at Roblox shows that there is a lot of money to be made in the gaming platform, initially popular with children, which is fast becoming a major metaverse platform for everyone.
Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” dream will take years to bear fruit: the concept of metaverse sounds intriguing at first. In fact, its origins come from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where the metavers was a virtual world. Zuckerberg talks about moving in a new direction, a step from mobile computing to creating a virtual reality ecosystem.
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But it would also mean the end of the social network we all know. The meaning of social media will change in a metravers world and how you will experience it. Instagram and Facebook feel natural on smartphones, but who knows how they transform into a virtual space.
There are also limitations to the hardware. Not only are they bulky, but the Oculus headphones aren’t ready for the metaverse yet. The biggest problem with the whole metaverse concept is that it looks like a marketing campaign to improve the adoption of VR and AR headphones.
Facebook may have created the social media economy on its own, but this time there are other big players who also want us to live in a metaverse future. Zuckerberg not only has to develop the hardware, software, and experience on his own, but it also requires a lot of investment to create the basic infrastructure and billions of dollars of investment to make the metaverse a reality. Following Facebook’s trajectory with privacy and misinformation, consumers may not decide to live in a virtual reality “metaverse”.