Facebook is working on the creation of its own metaverse, and is planning to hire as many as 10,000 people in Europe over the next five years.
The company has already been active in the virtual reality sector for a long time, so the decision to create its own metaverse is not at all unexpected.
Summary
Facebook’s rebranding in view of the metaverse
What is surprising, however, is that it now seems so involved in this project that it seems to want to change its name. It is rumoured that as early as next week the company could announce a forthcoming name change. The website, the app and the social network will continue to be called Facebook, but the company will have a different name.
Google has already done something similar in the past, as the parent company is now called Alphabet.
The growth prospects of the metaverse
Other technological giants are also working on metaverses, such as the Chinese companies Tencent and Alibaba. It seems that this could be the new frontier of online business.
These are shared virtual spaces that everyone can access via the Internet, also using virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) devices, which are already well known in the crypto sector thanks to some similar blockchain-based projects that are already active.
The fact that technology giants such as Facebook and Tencent are also interested in this new technology says a lot about the growth prospects it could have, and above all about its economic potential.
Even TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is moving in this direction, with the acquisition of VR startup Pico Interactive.
According to some metaverse fans, these could even be the next phase of the current Internet development. Parallel virtual worlds that constitute an entire ecosystem within which users can “live” a sort of second virtual life. This is also prompting many investors to take an interest in this new world.
New developments for Facebook
To date, no public details are known about the nature of the metaverse that Facebook is working on, but since the company has been active in the VR sector for some time, it is possible that the state of work is already advanced.
The fact that they are also already testing the new Novi digital asset wallet suggests that they may already be ready to test something. The idea of hiring 10,000 people over the next five years in Europe suggests that there is important news to come.
We will most likely learn more at the Connect conference on 28 October, when they are expected to announce the name change.
Nevertheless, the financial markets are still not particularly optimistic about the short-term future of Facebook shares. It is worth noting that the all-time high was reached at the beginning of September, and since then the price has only fallen 11%. Moreover, the stock has appreciated by almost 7% in recent days.
Some time ago, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
“You can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content—you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or web page, like dancing, for example. . . . I think we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company”.
