Mark Zuckerberg is turning his trillion-dollar Facebook into a 'Metaverse' company, a digital universe, so here is everything you might have missed to know about the Metaverse.
Top global tech companies and executives have started discussing building a "metaverse." as a next-generation technology for smartphones and the mobile Internet.
Technologists consider a metaverse a virtual space/universe where thousands of people can gather to play, work, and socialize. Metaverse is related to Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). AR and VR are currently developed by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.
What is a Metaverse?
The term metaverse first originated in Neal Stephenson's novel 'Snow Crash' in 1992, the story of a pizza delivery rider who spends his spare time plugging into the Metaverse.
The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space created by virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space.
Facebook
– a social media company to a metaverse company
Social Media giant Facebook has shown its continued interest in the Metaverse space. In June, Facebook bought a Roblox-like platform called Crayta. Recently, the company announced a product team to work on the "metaverse."
In an interview last week, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the company's Metaverse could work on virtual reality headsets, mobile phones, and game consoles.
He said, "I think that Facebook will transform from primarily being a social media company to a metaverse company over the next five years."
However, Facebook's choice of rebranding the company as a "metaverse" company instead of an AR/VR company is a very particular distinction.
Metaverse offers Facebook an opportunity to differentiate its moonshot efforts and its core business, building a wide-reaching hub that shines on AR and VR platforms and is mobile and desktop friendly.
Mattew Ball, an investor and writer on the Metaverse, thinks it is a successor to mobile Internet. Instead of accessing all of the Internet via separated 2D web pages or apps, we'll experience it via persistent, interconnected, virtual simulations.
Roblox
Roblox has seemed to be the most specific embodiment of the Metaverse for many techies. Roblox is a social space where users can jump between virtual experiences while creating their own experiences inside it.
Notable, it is not a virtual reality experience; instead, thriving mainly on mobile and desktop. Still, it is a big thing that attracted investors as Roblox's worth is now more than 45 billion USD.
