Well in Facebook’s eyes it’s the embodied internet, it is the successor of the mobile internet. Instead of looking at a screen, you’re going to be in the experience, interacting in a more natural and vivid way. Most importantly and consistently highlighted throughout the keynote is the sense of presence and being in a shared space together. Either that’s working in a shared virtual space together or joining a friend at a real-life gig across the other side of the world – the metaverse will make this possible. Not surprising considering the social media giant built its fortune around bringing people together.
Zuckerberg highlighted that games and game studios are at the forefront of building and driving new innovations and believes many industries will begin to use gaming technologies to construct experiences and new business models as we advance towards a more immersive, embodied internet.
Andrew Bosworth (Boz), Head of Facebook Reality Labs announced they will be bringing online their new Presence Platform, which is a set of machine learning and AI libraries to create mixed reality experiences, focusing on everything from environmental understanding, voice interaction, spatial anchors and hand recognition.
However, the biggest drop and the biggest news since Facebook went public is the new name. Well kinda, it’s more of a restructuring similar to Google’s Alphabet. The Facebook name is no longer representative of the products the company has within its portfolio but more importantly where it’s going. Only just last week via Bloomberg the company announced it is investing $10 Billion into its metaverse efforts, with that comes change. So from now on Facebook is now Meta and Meta is primarily focused on developing its tools, products and ecosystems for the Metaverse. Watch the full keynote here.