We’re starting to get a clearer picture of Facebook’s future plans and they’re either really interesting or sort of scary depending on where you stand.
For one, the company is finally moving towards integrating its social media side with its virtual reality tech side. That was expected.
What probably isn’t expected is that Zuckerberg and company want to transform their corporate ecosystem into its own kind of reality or “metaverse” as Ars Technica terms it.
These plans were outlined by Zuckerberg in a recent interview with tech outlet The Verge in which the CEO envisions a world in which people can interact with one another in a virtual space that Facebook builds and maintains.
Let’s just say, the ambitions are quite big and grand.
“The metaverse is a vision that spans many companies — the whole industry. You can think about it as the successor to the mobile internet. And it’s certainly not something that any one company is going to build, but I think a big part of our next chapter is going to hopefully be contributing to building that, in partnership with a lot of other companies and creators and developers. But you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And 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,” Zuckerberg told The Verge’s Casey Newton in a lengthy interview.
We suggest you check that out here – it’s got a ton of interesting insights from Facebook’s chief executive.
Longtime readers will remember that Instagram recently made a stir when it took to its blog to outline how it was shifting its core strategy.
When we take all of this into account and combine it with statements such as Adam Mosseri’s about Instagram moving away from photos as a focus and things start to make more sense. Some would argue that Zuckerberg’s Facebook remade the Internet once, so why not again?
Then again there’s the counterargument that not all of those changes are a good thing.
What do you think of Facebook’s “alternative reality” concept based around its social media platforms? A vision of the future or of dystopia itself? Let us know your thoughts on Facebook’s plans in the comments below.
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[Ars Technica]
