Mark Zuckerberg apparently hasn’t had enough yet, because he wants to turn Facebook into a metaverse. People are to be able to shop, work or meet in virtual spaces – a team of experts has now been assembled for these ambitious plans.
While Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are fighting over the supremacy of space tourism, a third party is rejoicing. Because Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also dreaming of a universe, a metaverse even.
What is the Facebook Metaverse?
At the end of June 2021, Zuckerberg already announced his plans to the Facebook staff, and now the plans are to be put into practice. The idea is to create a Facebook Metaverse – a virtual world where people can meet, shop and even work.
The tech company has put together a team of experts for this purpose. The team is headed by manager Andrew Bosworth, who is responsible for augmented and virtual reality at Facebook.
Virtual spaces in the Facebook Metaverse
In a Facebook post, Bosworth writes that much of the work in his Facebook Reality Lab (FRL) is closely tied to Zuckerberg’s Metaverse vision.
The defining feature of the metaverse will be presence – the feeling of really being there with people – and FRL has been focused for years on developing products that offer presence in digital spaces.
Facebook’s Portal and Oculus products are already capable of connecting people “regardless of physical distance” or “or teleporting them to new virtual worlds and experiences.”
For the Facebook Metaverse, however, the “connective tissue between these spaces” also needs to be built, he said. Facebook thus wants to “remove the constraints of physics.”
The goal should be for users to be able to move around virtual spaces “with the same ease” as they would when moving from one room in their home to the next.”
Facebook also takes aim at federal election
At the same time, Facebook is not losing sight of more mundane issues. For the upcoming federal election, politicians and their campaign teams can join a protection program with Facebook Protect. The program has already been active in the U.S. since 2019.
Facebook Protect includes two-factor authentication. It also increases scrutiny of pages and accounts for hacker attacks. In contrast to the Protect program in the U.S., politicians Germany cannot register themselves. Facebook says that all accounts that are eligible for the program will be informed by the network.
