Mark Zuckerberg says the next platform of virtual reality will be more immersive than any other medium has been in the past. MARK ZUCKERBERG: The metaverse is not just another chapter of the world network, it's a complete new internet experience. We're calling it the metaverse where users can inhabit different realities and interact with others.
In one corner, you have the scrappy upstarts with dreams of disrupting the establishment by building new models for conducting business on blockchain that replaces the current VC-driven startup model. These companies give their efforts the aspirational name “Web3.”Mark Zuckerberg's ambition for Facebook is to make sure it reaches out to the maximum number of people across various mediums, including products that he thinks will allow users to create their own virtual reality experiences. This will be Facebook's metaverse - an interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi!
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked with employees about an ambitious new initiative. Beyond connecting and building on top of years of its own services, the company would pursue a vision of the future that is not only possible but inevitable. Facebook would build out a vast metaverse.
The metaverse is a term that came about in relation to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel, Snow Crash. It refers to a convergence of physical, augmented and virtual reality in a shared online space. Earlier this month, The New York Times discussed how companies like Epic Games’ Fortnite are increasingly incorporating metaverse-like elements into their offerings. (Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has spoken numerous times on his company’s plans to contribute to a metaverse).
The metaverse is not just an immersive, interactive environment that players are immediately transported into. It’s accessible across all of our different computing devices: virtual reality, augmented reality, personal computers, mobile phones, and game consoles. It’s also not necessarily a place where we’ll spend most of our time playing games because games aren’t the only thing that can or should be examined or installed on this platform. We should also consider how other technologies will work seamlessly with it, like navigating areas collaboratively with people that may be located in different states or countries perhaps.
Zuckerberg explained that the Metaverse will bring enormous opportunity to individual creators and artists; to people living outside of cities with bigger spaces and who want more room; and to individuals who want more entertainment, education, etc. With the company’s Oculus division producing the Quest headset, Facebook is trying to develop one.
With their Oculus division, Zuckerberg said Facebook is working on their own headset just waiting to take you to a world that's out of this one, where people could have the next-best thing to a teleportation device while they can work or explore new places. They're trying to develop a marketable VR system that helps people learn things that they wouldn't be able to anywhere else like in real life without all the extravagance of living in cities like New York or London. Virtual reality headsets could help people who are isolated by geography get access to entertainment and educational alternatives for themselves and their children at lower costs compared to traveling now which would benefit kids more than anyone else who's dependent on other people and resources when it comes down to getting the better chances at having good opportunities ahead in terms of academics or even opportunities when it comes down to finding a job!
Mark Zuckerberg recently sat down with the USA to discuss his vision of the future and how Facebook is striving to make the world, in his words, “more open and connected”. Apparently, one way he envisions achieving this goal is with the Oculus division which had been responsible for the production of its Quest Headset. The quest is said to have superior tracking abilities than we have come across yet and many things still remain to be explored about it, but there hasn't been an official launch date for the Quest so far which has caused concerns over whether or not Zuckerberg's vision will become a reality at all.
One of the main reasons VR is taking off right now has to do with the fact that there are a lot of big businesses getting involved in the metaverse space. Microsoft bought Minecraft developer Mojang in 2014 for US$ 2.5 billion. Gaming universe builder Roblox is about to be worth billions over time as well, but there are even bigger companies who have taken notice of this and have begun investing their own capital into metaverse development. For example, Apple announced another investment just last month of more than $1 billion dollars into AR/VR startups through their Cupertino-based company's startup accelerator called 'Apple Accelerator'. It doesn't stop there either. Various other large corporations most likely wouldn't want to get left behind in all these investments being made - so they're following suit with some mega buck capital adventures of their own as we speak making this a very exciting time as one can see! H&M started its first fashion store on Metaverse.
Meta is going to reap the economic and social benefits of a digitally connected world—and allow us to create an electrifying new territory together that all will benefit from.