Facebook to a digital world Meta? Yes, Facebook has changed its name to Meta (Metaverse) after the launch of Horizon Worlds. What is Metaverse and why the need for a rebrand? I wondered many times if I could be in a Disney world in my childhood, but once the realization hit, it was all clear to me that it was a fantasy, but to break all those chains we thought impossible, Facebook came up with Metaverse, a world of digital life. How cool will it be to join your non-native friend for a cup of tea in the morning and join your friends from all over the world on a trip to beautiful places that are very far away through the digital world? It all happens through the Metaverse. At present, the trend of working from home is familiar to most people, but through Metaverse, you can work in an atmosphere where you can meet all your colleagues and share your expressions from your home. It’s not all a dream. Facebook didn’t simply change its name; it totally changed the direction and fundamentals of the company and became the first to step into this digital realm.
This technology has the huge potential to become the world’s biggest business because it provides people with the ability to carry themselves to another place through virtual reality. Facebook to a digital world, Meta is the parent company which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, that had already laid the foundation for connecting people via photos, videos, and text messages, but Meta acts as the successor to all of these. The whole internet access available to us is essentially two-dimensional, but Metaverse takes the whole internet experience and upgrades it to a 3D environment, which will provide a virtual home for you, and you can choose the avatar as you wish. You can interact with one another in a traditional way, where you meet a person, welcome them with your warm smile, and can even see all their actions and movements in a detailed way. Now a question of how will arise. It’s all with the concept of virtual reality, augmented reality, and blockchain, along with the entire inputs of social media. By wearing augmented virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Quest 2, you can enter into the digital realm and communicate with others. You can converse with people or work with your colleagues as if they were in the real world by using their phone or webcam, which is displayed on a virtual screen in front of you. The virtual screen doesn’t depend on any medium. Facebook has also changed the virtual reality company Oculus into Meta Platforms Inc. because VR glasses are essential to accessing Meta.
Retail in the metaverse would be similar to the user being able to enter a massive virtual shopping mall with as many people as the virtual space can hold, purchase a one-of-a-kind digital item, and then sell it in the completely virtual world, or perhaps on Twitter, eBay, or Open Sea. Metaverse is also used to raise your own digital assets by buying virtual lands and making investments. How to own virtual land in Metaverse? The first step is to purchase a digital crypto wallet. Next, select your real estate platform. There are many virtual platforms available in the metaverse. Select a particular land, connect your wallet, and confirm your purchase. The most desirable part is shopping in the metaverse. Yes, you can visit your favourite shops. You can virtually see, touch, and experience products as if you’re really there, and cart your favourite products. Payments can be processed through cryptocurrencies. Can we touch and feel the objects in the metaverse? Yes, people can touch and feel the virtual objects just as they would do in the traditional way. It’s the glove features that trigger the actuators that apply pressure to the hand depending on how the virtual object is handled. Next, the predominant platform will be gaming. The gaming experience will be much better and more flexible. Users can add to their virtual world and get organic experiences through the metaverse. Think about how it would be if you could step down into the game and gain experience as if you were there. But gaming platforms have already used the concept of metaverse. Decentraland was the first company to build a metaverse, followed by Sandbox and Epic Games, and used a cryptocurrency based on Ethereum and discrete spaces for multiplayer games.
The Metaverse is not wholly new. It was first described in the science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, but it had a dystopic view that was not good for the future. It turned to boom, but the metaverse isn’t fully in existence. Some platforms contained metaverse like elements. The metaverse now, which Facebook has brought in, is like a second life. Users can customize their avatars, meet other people, create virtual spaces, own virtual property, and exchange goods and services. Mark Zuckerberg wants to create the next version of the internet that is Facebook to a digital world, Meta and it plans to spend at least $10 billion this year on Facebook reality labs, tasked with creating AR and VR hardware, software, and content. Mark recently wrote in a letter, “We’ve gone from desktop to web to mobile; from text to photos to video.” But this isn’t the end of the line. The next platform will be even more immersed that embodies internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build”. It contain both pros and cons. Innovations in communication, doubling up the power of blockchain, creating new opportunities for branding, and development of a virtual economy will be some of the main pros of Meta, whereas the cons will be that every individual does not have access to advanced technologies and fast internet and cannot afford a high-end VR headset for entering the metaverse, privacy and security implications like collecting data and identity theft, reducing the difference between real and virtual life, and influencing real-time interactions. On comparing both, it gives a balanced idea of what the metaverse is and why, we should analyze and enrich our knowledge of the new technology right now.