Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he plans to transform the social media platform into a “Metaverse” in the next five years
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently said that he wants the social media giant to become an ‘online Metaverse’. It’s “an embodied internet where instead of just viewing content, you are in it,” he said.
The Facebook CEO told The Verge people shouldn’t live through “small, glowing rectangles.”
“That’s not really how people are made to interact,” he added. “That’s not how we process things.”
What is the Metaverse?
A metaverse is an digital world where you can game, work and communicate virtually, usually through a VR headset
“You feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness,” he said.
Zuckerberg says that Facebook is also working on the ‘Infinite Office’ – a feature that will allow users to design a workplace using VR.
“In the future, instead of just doing this over a phone call, you’ll be able to sit as a hologram on my couch, or I’ll be able to sit as a hologram on your couch, and it’ll actually feel like we’re in the same place, even if we’re in different states or hundreds of miles apart,” he said. “I think that is really powerful.”
Facebook invests in Oculus, betting on the future of VR
Facebook has continued to invest in VR products, recently spending over $2 billion on Oculus. This comes two years after Oculus launched its invitation-only Facebook Horizon. Using the software, users can use a headset to chat in a virtual space with an avatar.
Although Zuckerberg admitted the current VR headsets are “a bit clunky”, he promised improvements are in the works.
He says Facebook’s Metaverse will be “accessible across… different computing platforms” including VR, AR, PC, mobile devices and games consoles.
Natasha is an Associate Producer at ticker NEWS with a Bachelor of arts from Monash University. She has previously worked at Sky News Australia and Monash University as an Online Content Producer.
BuzzFeed is set to go by on A.I-generated content, with the company to use ChatGPT to create content for the site
The media giant plans to use the service to generate quizzes and further personalise its user experience.
“If the past 15 years of the internet have been defined by algorithmic feeds that curate and recommend content, the next 15 years will be defined by AI and data helping create, personalise and animate the content itself,” BuzzFeed Chief Executive Jonah Peretti recently said.
BuzzFeed recently announced that it would be cutting 12 per cent of its workforce to rein in costs.
The Department of Justice and a handful of states have sued Google over the company’s dominance in the digital ad space.
This is the second anti-trust lawsuit the D.O.J. has filed against Google.
The D.O.J. and states are seeking to unwind Google’s alleged anti-competitive acquisitions in the advertising space, as part of the joint case.
“We alleged that Google has used anti-competitive exclusionary and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference.
“Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, & unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its [digital ad] dominance.”