Facebook is building a metaverse

The metaverse embodies the future of the social network, according to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

I hope it will be in about five years […]People look at us first and foremost as a metaverseHe said in an interview with the specialist website The Verge, mid-July.

The new California giant’s ambition will be based on its virtual and augmented reality division, called Facebook Reality Labs (FRL). The branch is headed by Andrew Bosworth, who is responsible, among other things, for the Oculus immersive headphones, which are currently used mainly for entertainment purposes.

The people who worked on the Instagram app, on Facebook Gaming, and on Oculus have all been recruited into this new team.

To achieve our vision of metaverse, we need to build the connective tissue between them [les différents] Digital spaces – so that people can overcome physical limitations and can move between these spaces as easily as moving between rooms in their home.

The primary quality of the metaverse will be presence – the feeling of truly being with people – and FRL has been building products that have enabled presence in different digital spaces for years., the CEO wrote on Facebook on Monday.

An alternate world inhabited by gods

The metaverse defines a cyberspace parallel to physical reality in which a community of people can interact in the form of avatars. The concept was developed by author Neil Stephenson in a science fiction novel virtual samurai (snow crash).

Some video game communities have created embryonic dead universes, such as Roblox, a platform that includes countless games created by children and teens, and It is an electronic game, the survival shooter game that has conquered 350 million people.

At the end of last April, for example, five virtual concerts of American rapper Travis Scott, who appeared as an avatar in It is an electronic gameIt has been watched by more than 12 million players.

Gradually, screens, holograms, virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses will allow transformations Fluids of virtual universes in physical places, such as teleportationAccording to Mark Zuckerberg.

I always thought it was the holy grail of social interactionsHe explains in an interview with The Verge, where he decries the limits of the smartphone as a means of communication and access to digital spaces.

metaphases, It is the successor to the mobile Internet, He says.