CIOInsider India Magazine
What is Facebook's Metaverse Dream?
When DJ Marshmello held a concert on Fortnite, it went down in history as the game’s first ever concert. But not only that, it showed the gravity of what Metaverse is capable of, although the game has certain elements pertaining to it. Nonetheless, many companies are bidding to transform their business into a Metaverse company.
On that note, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced his ambitions of turning the social media platform into a Metaverse company in the next five years, while he outlined other ambitions.
For he believes that the Metaverse will be a successor to the mobile internet and that forming this product division is the next phase in Facebook's evolution. He desires to provide a social media platform that has more to do than merely viewing it, rather Mr.Zuckerberg envisions companions of Facebook to actually be in its universe.
But Facebook is not the company that has cast its vote for Metaverse, Google and Samsung also have their votes on the yet to arrive internet game changer. Google's shared workspace technologies, which are fueled by the company's long-term cloud computing investments, were all minor but major steps toward online work culture institutionalization. In fact, all three have made huge investments in cloud computing and virtual reality. All in hopes of achieving this Metaverse dream into a reality.
Although Facebook dreams of making its dream a reality, Mr.Zuckerberg stressed that the Metaverse cannot be built or managed by one entity alone. He felt that a lot of professional hands would be required to carry on this dream. Hence a team for that is already set in progress.
A Team for the Big Dream to Stream
Facebook is welding a product team to whisk efforts on the Metaverse, a virtual world in which people can wander around devices and interact in real time.
“The feeling that you're actually there with another person or in another place is the defining aspect of the metaverse presence. How we express ourselves will be dominated by the creation of avatars and digital objects”, Mr.Zuckerberg expressed
It will include the Horizon teams, as well as the AR/VR content team and the Unit 2 Games team, which Facebook purchased last month.
As a matter of fact, the company intends to hire hundreds of additional employees for the team.
Shift Work to Metaverse
For fans of sci-fi movies, virtual gaming and more know precisely what Mr.Zuckerberg intends on creating and yes, it will indeed be like technologically teleporting into the virtual world. It sounds more than amusing, but Mr.Zuckerberg is also implying the many opportunities individuals will drive from this dream.
One of these opportunities makes for a chance to be used at work and during leisure to create a social experience. For the introverts this may probably be a good substitute to handle those so-called social meet and greets. But of course, this opportunity doesn’t entail gaming alone. People will be able to ‘teleport' between different experiences, according to Mr.Zuckerberg.
If that wasn’t enough, the social media behemoth is pounding the rice on an unlimited office, where individuals may design their own virtual reality workstation.
The 'virtual environment,' according to Zuckerberg, will be available through a variety of devices and headsets, whether or not they were created by Facebook.
This strikes another opportunity, that is, a chance for companies to get creative on the virtual realm in the form of their device creations. Even yet, the issue is that all companies interested in the metaverse experience need to be on the same page. Microsoft Corp has spoken of the 'business metaverse,' and companies such as Nvidia Corp, Roblox Corp, and Epic Games Inc have their own versions of the metaverse.
The social media behemoth has also made significant investments in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) (VR).
“The feeling that you're actually there with another person or in another place is the defining aspect of the metaverse presence. How we express ourselves will be dominated by the creation of avatars and digital objects”, Mr.Zuckerberg expressed.
Facebook's role in helping to pioneer this new form of the internet is critical, according to Zuckerberg. The social media behemoth has established an almost unstoppable advertising and messaging business, but it did it using competing operating systems and devices from Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google.
Due to this strategy, Facebook is at a disadvantage in several ways: it must develop its products to adhere to the software limits that its competitors impose, which poses issues when Apple, for example, decides to cut down on online tracking.
With nearly 20 percent of its workforce working just on VR and AR, including recent acquisitions like BigBox VR and Unit 2 Games, the corporation has put a lot of money into virtual reality. The VR segment accounts for only about three percent of Facebook's total revenue. The global VR market is predicted to increase from $3.1 billion in 2019 to $57.55 billion in 2027, according to Fortune Business Insights.
Something Smells Uncertain
The US government is taking major steps to control Big Tech, and Facebook's metaverse vision comes at a time when the US government is taking strong steps to regulate Big Tech. Corporations are being investigated, which might result in significant changes to how they operate.
The Federal Trade Commission has accused Facebook of acquiring smaller firms and competitors in order to create a social media monopoly. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attempted to split up Facebook's two main acquisitions, Instagram and Whatsapp, in 2020. The new legislation attempting to split up Facebook could make it more difficult for the business to make acquisitions in the future.
But viewing it on a virtual reality basis, the capacity to track bodily motions is unrivaled with VR technology. Commercial VR systems can track body movements 90 times per second to adequately present a scene, according to American VR researcher Jeremy Bailenson, while high-end systems capture 18 types of movements across the user's head and hands. The systems can gather just under 2 million distinct recordings of body language in under 20 minutes”. A user's identity can be traced back to everything they do in the metaverse.
