An Explanation of What is the Metaverse and How Will It Work
The latest buzzword that has captured the imagination of the tech industry is the Metaverse. Since so much is happening around this, one of the most famous internet platforms in the world wants to do a rebrand to signal that it wants to embrace this futuristic idea.
Facebook is Renaming Itself as Meta so it can emphasize its vision of the ‘metaverse.’
Recently, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced that he would change the name of his company to Meta Platforms Inc. It will be known with the shortened term Meta, and it could be the biggest thing that will happen to the Metaverse ever since Neal Stephenson, a science fiction writer, had the term coined for the novel that he made last 1992; which is “Snow Crash.”
However, Zuckerberg’s team may not be the only tech visionaries with ideas on how the Metaverse that will employ a combination of other technologies, including virtual reality, will take shape. Some who have thought about it for some time are concerned about the new world connected to the social media giant. It could have access to so much more personal information even if it is accused of being incapable of stopping dangerous information, including online harms to increase and exacerbate the problems in the real world.
What is the Metaverse?
Consider the Metaverse as the internet that is given life or rendered in 3D. Mark Zuckerberg referred to this as a “virtual environment” that people can enter instead of only looking at it on the TV screen. Essentially, this world would have endlessly interconnected virtual communities wherein people can play, meet, and work using smartphone apps, glasses for virtual reality, augmented reality headsets, or any other device.
According to the analyst, Victoria Petrock, who is following emerging technologies, online life’s other aspects will be incorporated here, like social media and shopping. It will be connectivity’s next evolution wherein everything would eventually come together in a seamless and doppelganger universe. With this, you can live your virtual life the same way you live your physical life.
What Can People Do in the Metaverse?
In the Metaverse, people can have an online trip, attend a virtual concert, and purchase digital clothes.
The Metaverse can be a game-changer for people who have been working from home ever since the Coronavirus outbreak. Instead of going on video calls with co-workers, employees can now see each other virtually.
Facebook had a meeting with software businesses like Horizon Workrooms so they could use their Oculus VR headsets. However, its early reviews were not significant. Aside from that, the headsets are priced at $300 or more. Due to the highly cutting-edge experience that the Metaverse can provide, it could be beyond the reach of the masses. People who can afford it can use their avatars to go from one virtual world to another that different companies have created.
Most of the experience in the Metaverse would involve people teleporting from an adventure to the next. However, tech businesses still need to discover how they can connect their online platforms. To make things work, competing platforms in technology would have to agree on a set of standards. It will avoid separating the people in the Microsoft metaverse from the Facebook metaverse.
Will Facebook Go All-In on the Metaverse?
Zuckerberg plans to go big on what he considers the next generation of the internet. That is because he thinks that it will become a significant part of the digital economy. He expects people to begin to see Facebook as a metaverse company in the upcoming years instead of just a social media company.
It made critics wonder if the possible pivot may be an effort to make the people distracted from the crises that the company is experiencing. Included here are the concerns about handling misinformation, testimony made by previous employees, and antitrust crackdowns.
One of Facebook’s previous employees, Frances Haugen, accused that the Facebook platform harms children and incites political violence when it copied internal research documents and turned them over to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
These were also given to some media outlets that include The Associated Press. It reported many stories regarding how Facebook prioritized profits over safety and kept their research from the public and the investors.
Could the Metaverse be just a Project of Facebook?
According to Zuckerberg, one company can’t build the Metaverse on its own. Other businesses are now talking about the Metaverse, like the chipmaker Nvidia and Microsoft. According to the vice president of the Omniverse platform by Nvidia, Richard Kerris, so many companies will be building virtual environments and worlds in the Metaverse, just like how a lot of companies do things on the web. Because of that, it can be extensible and open that people can teleport to various worlds even if it’s another business the same way people can go from a website to another.
Video game companies have now taken the lead role. The company that made the famous videogame Fortnite was able to raise $1 billion from investors so they could get help with their plans in the long-term to build the Metaverse. The other significant player is the game platform Roblox. Outlined in its vision is the Metaverse. It is a place that would allow people to come together with so many 3D experiences. Here, they can create, play, socialize, and work.
Consumer brands are also trying to get into the trend as well. The Italian fashion brand Gucci was able to collaborate with Roblox to sell its collection of digital accessories. Clinique and Coca-Cola also sold digital tokens that are pitched as the stepping stone for people to get into the Metaverse.
Could the Metaverse be another way they can get more of my data?
How Zuckerberg embraced the Metaverse is in some way contradictory to the central tenet of its most prominent enthusiasts. They have envisioned the Metaverse as the liberation of the online culture from tech platforms like Facebook. That is because they have assumed ownership of the people’s posts, photos, playlists, and accounts. These platforms have traded off what they get from that information.
According to Steve Jang, a venture capitalist, and Kindred Ventures’ managing partner, people want to quickly move around the internet in a way that won’t allow them to become monitored or tracked.
What Facebook wants is to have its business model based on personal information carried over to have targeted advertising sold into the Metaverse. According to Zuckerberg, these will continue to be a vital part of this strategy throughout social media. It may also be a meaningful aspect of the Metaverse.
Petrock has said that she’s concerned about Facebook attempting to lead the way into the virtual world. It would require more personal information and allow greater possibilities for misinformation and abuse that Facebook has not yet fixed in its existing platform.
