‘Now we have a new North Star,’ CEO Mark Zuckerberg says.<\/b>
\nFacebook is renaming itself Meta to reflect the company\u2019s new priority on building a virtual reality world dubbed the metaverse. \u201cWe are going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first,\u201d Mark Zuckerberg said during a speech at the Facebook Connect event on Thursday. Zuckerberg announced the new brand after talking up his company\u2019s ambitious goal of creating a VR world similar to what\u2019s depicted in the hit sci-fi book Ready Player One, where virtual reality becomes so good it dominates people\u2019s lives, becoming a new way to live, work, and play. \u201cOur mission remains the same: It\u2019s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands, they\u2019re not changing either. And we are still the company that designs technology around people. But now we have a new North Star. To help bring the metaverse to life,\u201d Zuckerberg said. As a result, Zuckerberg is dropping Facebook as the name for the parent company. \u201cBuilding our social media apps will always be an important focus for us. But right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can\u2019t possibly represent everything we\u2019re doing today, let alone in the future,\u201d he added. To underscore the company\u2019s new focus, Zuckerberg prepared an elaborate one-hour keynote that relied on Hollywood-like special effects to depict how he hopes the metaverse will one day take shape in real life. According to him, the technology can improve to the point where VR experiences will feel close to real life. For example, one demo involved two friends attending a music concert, except one of them does so virtually. The two friends then join a concert afterparty in VR, where they can buy virtual NFT items and mingle with celebrity guests. \u201cThe defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence\u2014like you are right there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this,\u201d Zuckerberg said. The other aim is to ensure the metaverse remains an open ecosystem. So if you buy an item in one VR experience, such as an outfit your avatar, you’ll be able to take it with you into another VR world. The goal will take decades to accomplish\u2014assuming it’s even possible and that people will embrace it. The same presentation also largely ignored the real-world limitations of VR. Instead, the demos portrayed it as simply putting on a pair of glasses or pressing a button to launch a hologram. In reality, VR headsets can be big, pricey and clunky. They also need power, can occasionally cause motion sickness, and look a tad ridiculous. Hence, the future Zuckeberg hopes to create will require game-changing improvements to computing and networking. However, the same presentation also previewed several technologies Facebook is working on to make the metaverse into a reality. They include near-term products such as a new VR headset called Project Cambria that\u2019s arriving next year. \u00ab\u00a0This isn\u2019t a Quest 2 replacement, or a Quest 3,\u00a0\u00bb the company’s Oculus Blog says. \u00ab\u00a0Project Cambria will be a high-end device at a higher price point, because it\u2019s going to be packed with all the latest advanced technologies, including improved social presence, color Passthrough, pancake optics, and a lot more.\u00a0\u00bb Over the longer term, Facebook is hoping to one day create photorealistic VR avatars that’ll be indistinguishable from people. Another project involves using a wristband that can sense your finger and hand movements, and translate them into the digital world. The company also plans on investing $10 billion this year on its VR\/AR division Facebook Reality Labs with more funding to come. \u00ab\u00a0Our hope though is if we all work at it, within the next decade the metaverse will reach a billion people,\u00a0\u00bb Zuckerberg added. The rebranding, meanwhile, comes as Facebook faces criticism for its response to misinformation and abuse on the platform via a flurry of documents turned over to the press and lawmakers by a former product manager. Zuckerberg has been largely defiant in response, blaming the avalanche of bad press for the social network on \u201ca coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company.\u201d<\/p>\n