Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta, formerly known as Facebook Inc, wants to take its metaverse offerings beyond social network and entertainment use cases. The social media giant said that it is looking at a 15-year journey wherein it wants to take consumers from just experiencing mobile internet from their screens to being in it.
Meta will be exploring education, work, fitness, and other use cases beyond experiences like “watching a cricket match together with friends from the best stadium seats through augmented reality.”
Vishal Shah, Vice President, Metaverse at Meta in an interaction with the media, said that the development of this new phase of internet use cases needs to be an industry-wide effort. “Metaverse ultimately can’t be built by one company, both from a platform and experience perspective. There needs to be companies, creative developers and businesses to build these experiences for the consumers. The new idea here is of co-creation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Meta has already started launching its new virtual reality apps and gears. Last week, it launched the first version of its virtual reality social media app Horizon Worlds in the US and Canada, which lets users create their digital avatars and interact in augmented reality with their friends, hosting parties and professional meetings, listening to music and watching content—all like you are seated in the same room. Meta also called out for content creators and developers to create for the platform.
The app will be integrated with Oculus’ Meta Quest 2 headset.
Shah said, “We are looking to invest in the next generation of hardware, which includes VR gears and Oculus 2. We are going to continue investing. Next year will see more coming up. An early version of RayBan glasses for stories is already out, but it has speakers, microphones and cameras. It will have more AR features. Our team is working on the next generation use cases, which are working on displays on televisions. We want to experience metaverse irrespective of the device you are on.”
Meta is also closely monitoring the developments of Web 3.0, and plans to invest into it and enabling features like non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in its family of apps.
