Facebook wants to rebrand itself for the ‘Metaverse’

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – Facebook plans to rename itself.

Concept –

For Facebook, the ‘rebranding’ isn’t just about a switch in the company name but a reflection of the company’s growing ambitions and focus on a new area: metaverse.
Facebook has already announced plans to invest $50 million as part of its efforts to create a ‘responsible’ metaverse. It also plans to create nearly new 10,000 jobs in Europe as part of its ‘metaverse’ ambitions.
Just like how Alphabet is now the parent company of Google, we could see a new parent company, under which Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and others operate.
Facebook’s attempt to rename is to align itself with the focus on building the metaverse, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly sees as becoming a reality sooner or later.
And Facebook, which also owns the Oculus VR gaming platform, doesn’t want to be left behind in the race to be a part of the metaverse.

What is metaverse?

A simplistic way to look at the metaverse is as a parallel, virtual, world where users can have different identities, possessions and characters.
In the complex explanation, Metaverse is supposed to be the post-Internet world, a decentralised computing platform of sorts if you will, which is continuous, and live. It is an entirely digital economy, and the way most Silicon valley intellectuals see this, metaverse exists both in the digital and physical realm.
Interoperability is key to metaverse’s success.
The metaverse does not reset or pause or end, but continues indefinitely.
Metaverse is not something that just one company can build. Nor is Facebook the only one working on this. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, has big plans for the metaverse using its unreal engine.

How will the metaverse really work?

Digital spaces, Virtual Reality games, a virtual world, or even just a game like Fortnite is not the metaverse.
The metaverse is being envisioned as a new world order really, where your services could be offered virtually in exchange for other virtual assets, or Cryptocurrencies. The way to look at it is that your existence will be enmeshed with the digital world in a much deeper, complex way.
Because everything and everyone is supposed to be a part of this, interoperability will be key. In order to ensure that the metaverse functions smoothly, it would require a rewriting of the current rules as they are for most of the internet services and functions.