Publication/Creation Date

August 5 2021

Creators/Contributors

Kyle Chayka (creator)
Mark Zuckerberg (contributor)
Facebook (contributor)

Description

"In a Facebook earnings call last week, Mark Zuckerberg outlined the future of his company. The vision he put forth wasn’t based on advertising, which provides the bulk of Facebook’s current profits, or on an increase in the over-all size of the social network, which already has nearly three billion monthly active users. Instead, Zuckerberg said that his goal is for Facebook to help build the “metaverse,” a Silicon Valley buzzword that has become an obsession for anyone trying to predict, and thus profit from, the next decade of technology. “I expect people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social-media company to seeing us as a metaverse company,” Zuckerberg said. It was a remarkable pivot in messaging for the social-media giant, especially given the fact that the exact meaning of the metaverse, and what it portends for digital life, is far from clear. In the earnings call, Zuckerberg offered his own definition. The metaverse is “a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces,” he said. It’s “an embodied Internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at. We believe that this is going to be the successor to the mobile Internet.”"

Augments

Living, Communicating, Interacting, Playing

Technology Keywords

Embodied Internet, Virtual Environment, Virtual Reality (VR), Avatars

Keywords

Social Media, Science Fiction, Games, Immersive, Lifestyle, Futurism

Marketing Keywords

Facebook, Snow Crash, Metaverse, Second Life, Fortnite, Epic Games, Roblox, Oculus

Source

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/facebook-wants-us-to-live-in-the-metaverse