What is the Metaverse? and why is Facebook trying to control it?

We are heading toward a future where we will be using (some yet-to-be-determined version) of the metaverse to go online.

Facebook is determined to play a major role in building and shaping this new realm, but are they striving to control it?

Although “metaverse” became a known after Facebook changed its company name to “Meta” last month, many people are still trying to understand what exactly the metaverse is and whether the hey should take seriousfuturistic vision shoupld be taken seriously.

The Metavaverse is defined most simply as a virtual world where people can socialize, work, and play — and Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes it is the future of the internet and of his trillion-dollar company.

Facebook’s metaverse idea isn’t new, Roblox, Nvidia, and Microsoft, have also been building out virtual worlds with virtual or augmented reality.

Mark Zuckerberg sees the metaverse as the “successor to the mobile internet,” an invention that reshaped all our lives by allowing us to go online anywhere, and made it possible for Facebook’s current business to exist.

The company is putting some of the brightest engineering minds in the world to work on this project, acquiring virtual reality and augmented reality companies, hiring over 10,000 people to work on it, and backing the initiative with tens of billions of dollars. And Zuckerberg, is genuinely really excited about it.

The timeline is still unclear, but it's extremely likely that we’re headed toward a future where we could all be using some yet-to-be-determined version of the metaverse to go online.

And Facebook is determined to play a major role in building and shaping this new realm, meaning that even if Facebook doesn’t single-handedly own the metaverse (as it has insisted it won’t), it’s still striving to control over it.

Today, Facebook still has to follow rules set by Apple and Google, which make and control the world’s dominant smartphone operating systems. But in this new world that will likely rely on VR/AR headsets and digital sensors, Facebook is striving to create its own rules and operating platform.

So what is the metaverse?

According to Zuckerberg, The metaverse is a way for us to make our virtual lives more seamlessly integrated with our real ones.

It will be “like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are, we’ll be able to express ourselves in new joyful, completely immersive ways,” said Zuckerberg in an October speech during which he demoed his vision of the metaverse.

The idea is to create a more immersive internet, in which we’ll use tech like AR and VR to spend our time engaging in virtual spaces and experiences rather than the physical world.

The term 'Metaverse' was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash (well worth a read by the way!), but now, Zuckerberg and many other tech executives want to make it a reality.

Practically, that means this world will disengage us from our physical realities: the office, the living room, the outdoors. We will instead plug into our headsets or otherwise be immersed in another environment.

Depending on how you see it, that could mean an improvement to your life; your surroundings or your physical appearance can be updated virtually. Or it can be read as a dystopian concept, as though the metaverse is for people who are escaping the grim circumstances of the real world (which is how it was envisioned in the novel Snow Crash).

The Metaverse is still very early in the development phase, and Facebook will be the first to tell you that it’s still in its infancy. Zuckerberg has said that it “does not fully exist” yet, and that we have just the “building blocks”.

The first step is adoption of VR headsets, like Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset, which costs £299 and has significantly lowered the entry price point for VR devices.

In its current form, the options for activities in the metaverse are to activities like playing games, watching VR videos, and attending virtual meetings.

Facebook sees the metaverse as the successor to the mobile internet. The technology creates an opportunity for Zuckerberg and Facebook to get ahead of the competition.

Unlike Apple or Google, which created iOS and Android, Facebook doesn’t control an operating system. Facebook has argued with Apple over the fees the company charges for purchases made on iPhone apps, and the general control it exerts over companies like Facebook via its terms for developers.

Right now, the two tech giants that effectively control entry to the mobile internet, Apple and Google, set some parameters around Facebook’s business.

Facebook designs its mobile app software to run on Apple’s and Google’s operating systems. In turn, Apple and Google take a 30 percent cut of any financial transactions that take place in Facebook’s iPhone app.

The metaverse presents a potential future where Facebook won’t have these constraints.

If Facebook succeeds at being the founder of the metaverse, then it would be the company building and selling virtual reality headsets used to access that metaverse, and it could control an app store selling metaverse apps. This would all give Facebook a level of control and influence over the future internet that it doesn’t have currently.

It could soon be normal for us to spend time in the metaverse, the way we currently share our private lives on the internet via Facebook.

Already, during the pandemic, the lines between our “real” life and our digital life have become more blurred, as billions of people around the world have depended on technology in unprecedented ways to connect with other people through interactive games, and virtual meeitngs on Zoom.

The pandemic led to more time in virtual worlds.

Will Facebook succeed in its metaverse ambitions?

When Google attempted to take VR/AR products mainstream with Google Glass in 2014, it failed because the tech was seen as uncool and privacy-invasive.

Facebook will have to convince people to give up their time in the real world for participating in the metaverse instead, and to trust Facebook, a company now famous for privacy scandals for the past five years.

Users could instead use competing metaverse products from Microsoft, or perhaps Apple, which is reportedly working on its own VR/AR efforts. So who is going to win this tech race?

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading.