Meta Commentary on Facebook's Metaverse Move to Becoming Meta

Update, 11/29: Added the summary video above!

7 years ago, Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson told me this:

"Metaverse" has turned into a sort of golem, capable of wandering the earth on its own, out of the purview of its creator. So I am always surprised to see where it turns up and what it's doing. Ten years ago that wasn't the case. Anyone who wanted to use it in front of a normal audience would have had to say "Metaverse, an idea from the novel Snow Crash." Twenty years ago, they'd have had to add, "a novel by Neal Stephenson." Now apparently "Metaverse" can stand up on its own three feet and lumber about, at least in the setting of tech blogs.

Now, however, it's front page news on every major media outlet, because this was just posted by Zuckerberg on Facebook's company site:

From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for.

Emphasis mine and put a pin in that, because if he's serious, that suggests a time when Oculus may not require Facebook Connect. In fact he just suggested that much in an interview with the Verge:

There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.

Speaking of which, while you may not need a Facebook account to enter Meta's Metaverse, plan to have your personal data tracked. Because as Zuckerberg says, Meta's Metaverse will be ad-driven:

Our ads model is designed to provide businesses the lowest prices. Our commerce tools are available at cost or with modest fees. As a result, billions of people love our services and hundreds of millions of businesses rely on our tools.

That’s the approach we want to bring to helping to build the metaverse.

But that's fine, right? It's not like Meta would leverage our personal data from our bodies and actual eyes in the Metaverse? 

Oh wait:

In The Matrix, fictional AIs would occasionally alter the virtual world to further their oppressive goals. But even the Agents didn’t use the more sophisticated techniques we’re discussing here. In real life, people won’t be used as batteries. We’ll more likely be plugged in as abstract computational nodes, our attention and product-buying decisions channeling the flow of trillions of dollars of commerce; our free will up for grabs to the most ‘persuasive’ bidders.

At least Oculus will no longer be called Oculus, says Meta's AR/VR head:

Starting in early 2022, you’ll start to see the shift from Oculus Quest from Facebook to Meta Quest and Oculus App to Meta Quest App over time. We all have a strong attachment to the Oculus brand, and this was a very difficult decision to make. While we’re retiring the name, I can assure you that the original Oculus vision remains deeply embedded in how Meta will continue to drive mass adoption for VR today.

Part of Oculus' original vision (shared by both founders Palmer Luckey and John Carmack), is to create a online world where the poor can enjoy virtual versions of a life they can never afford:

"This is one of those crazy man topics," Luckey [said in 2014], “but it comes down to this: Everyone wants to have a happy life, but it's going to be impossible to give everyone everything they want." Instead, he went on, developers can now create virtual versions of real experiences reserved only for the wealthy. “It's easy for us to say, living in the great state of California, that VR is not as good as the real world,” he went on, “but a lot of people in the world don't have as good an experience in real life as we do here.”

But anyone worried what happens if Meta makes the Metaverse with a capital M should take some comfort that this story is far from over. In fact, for all Facebook's billions, a few tiny (by which I mean massive) challenges lie in its way:

• ROBLOX has a 200 million active user headstart.
• Epic's Fortnite and the Epic-backed Core have some 80-85 million active users of their own.  
• Quest 2 headsets (Meta's leading HMD) has a relatively miniscule install base of 5 million.

Will Internet giants like Facebook/Meta be the ones that build the Metaverse? Watch Matthew Ball and The Washington Post's Gene discuss that very topic (above, 33:35). 

Photo via The Verge.

Comments

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

And Second Life has two decades of user-generated inertia behind it. Let's not discount the very silent whale in the room.

[Luther Weymann]

Facebook: Changes its name to Meta.
Me: Laughing out loud.
Zuck: "From now on, we're going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first."
Me: Dear Mark, I have not logged into your software since 2007. Your company only has value to me as a stockholder.

[Bavid Dailey]

I knew this was doomed when I read that Zuck plans to hire 10,000 (!!!) "engineers" in Europe alone to do this. ROFL. Manage a project with 10,000 engineers. To create an advertising metaverse. I'll pass thanks

[seph]

We'll see, all we can do is wait.

Mark speaks of post-mobile, obviously we're a long long way from any hardware that makes us use our smartphones less. Judging by all the CGI, 'Meta' foresees a future within the next decade where mixed reality devices fit as comfortable as our glasses, or are one in the same with our glasses.

Mark doesn't seem naive enough to believe VR/AR hardware as it exists will attract the masses. This is good because obviously he has a company with enough cash and longevity to not just wait for hardware to be better, but make the better hardware.

High Fidelity in contrast had as great of a vision, but no ability to wait forever or make its own hardware.

I don't trust Mark or anything he does to be ethical but I applaud him banking so much of his company on mixed reality's future. To me its kind of like if in the early 90s when IBM released the Simon smartphone they got bullish about the eventuality of an iPhone and that they would make it one day.

I believe because of how insular Facebook's idea of a metaverse is, other hardware and platforms like Microsoft's Windows Holographic and HoloLens will win the day in 10 years, but hopefully some sort of way apps and worlds for VR/AR headsets manage to be as open and owned by no one in particular as the internet is, if even only a few big companies make the hardware.

[harris]

Augmented reality is far beyond the human race thinking it will be the strange future with this technology. we know nothing about it and there will a lot more which we will know in the coming new year.