Facebook Renames to Meta

https://about.facebook.com/meta/

by TiredOfLife • 5 years ago

1089 1054 5 years ago

about.facebook.com

minimaxir2• 5 years ago

The rebrand was introduced as a "One More Thing" during the event keynote.

A 2007 "One More Thing" was the announcement of the iPhone and the future of mobile computing. Now a 2021 "One More Thing" is the announcement of a company rebrand to avoid government regulation.

danso2• 5 years ago

For better or worse, it does seem Zuckerberg is as invested in making the "metaverse" the new future of Facebook as Jobs was with Apple and the iPhone

schmorptron• 5 years ago

In this case, worse. Definitely worse.

JKCalhoun3• 5 years ago

Seems like "metaverse" means walled internet.

"You've got mail!" LOL

tomjen3• 5 years ago

I look forward to that, since maybe I will then know what the hell the metaverse is supposed to be.

wolverine8765• 5 years ago

For better or worse, it does seem Zuckerberg is as invested in making the "metaverse" the new future of Facebook as Jobs was with Apple and the iPhone

I don't think we should take that at face value; Zuckerberg of course has strong motivations to appear completely committed, including a desire to motivate employees, partners, etc., and a desire to distract from FB's current bad news (which might explain the timing - why now?). If we take it at face value, we are part of the messaging.

For one thing, FB's metaverse is an over-the-horizon technology and product, very much vapor at this point and one that may never happen. The iPhone went on sale months after Jobs' announcement (IIRC).

More interesting is that FB possibly has lost so much confidence in its brand that it's de-emphasizing it, which seems like an overreaction to me.

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

Zuckerberg is as invested in making the "metaverse" the new future of Facebook as Jobs was with Apple and the iPhone

The obvious distinction being Jobs, with his "one more thing," announced an actual product.

5faulker• 5 years ago

Still a faceless corporation though.

dudeman13• 5 years ago

I mean, I associate the book of faces with Lizard Zuckerberg.

It might as well act like a faceless corporation, but it is far from "faceless"... I think. Consider f.e. Tesla's face, or Amazon's face.

akudha• 5 years ago

Having watched the downfall of MySpace, Orkut etc, I thought (hoped) same thing might happen to FaceBook. But now it feels like they are going to be around, for a long, long time. I don't know if anyone is even trying to take on them, Google seems to have given up on their social products. FB might not be fashionable anymore, people might even curse them, but they'll continue to use them at some level :( And they have enough money to keep buying other companies and stay at least somewhat relevant

It feels like only regulators can take on them, but that too is unlikely to happen, except some feeble attempts in Europe

mro_name3• 5 years ago

metaface

nerbert• 5 years ago

Colombo invented the "one more thing". Give credit where credit is due ;)

agumonkey• 5 years ago

Colombo was also more valuable that this announcement it seems.

mrzool• 5 years ago

This brought back memories, thank you :')

aliswe• 5 years ago

who?

nabla9• 5 years ago

I think you remember wrong. iPhone was not one more thing announcement. In 2007 One more thing was Safari for Windows.

Here is list: https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/one-more-thing-3793072/

rchaud7• 5 years ago

I thonk the iPhone announcement was at a one-off January event, different from their regular event int the fall.

jb1991• 5 years ago

announcement of a company rebrand to avoid government regulation

how does FB changing their name affect their chances at regulation?

mohanmcgeek2• 5 years ago

Just guessing: now Meta is a holding company of various social media "companies" so it'll be a bit harder to make a case that one company has a monopoly on the internet social media advertising.

They can even list Instagram on the market selling maybe a 5% equity.

edgriebel2• 5 years ago

rebrand to avoid government regulation

Aww, kids are so cute when they're having a temper tantrum

_2d30• 5 years ago

Imagine thinking FB execs are so stupid that this was the impetus for the decision:

"One More Thing" is the announcement of a company rebrand to avoid government regulation.

shuckles• 5 years ago

iPhone was not announced as a One More Thing at Macworld 2007. It was a direct transition from the Apple TV segment.

arnaudsm• 5 years ago

Thank you for pointing it out, that's an huge Mandela effect

gulbrandr• 5 years ago

to avoid government regulation

Could you elaborate on that please?

quartz2• 5 years ago

https://meta.com is live as well.

...I can't tell if it's intentional that the page loads initially with the "facebook" brand in the uppper left and then quickly overwrites it with meta.

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

The keynote video redirecting to a Facebook login screen is hilarious.

ZephyrBlu• 5 years ago

Why? The keynote video is on Facebook, that's why it would be redirecting you to a login screen.

dstick• 5 years ago

Someone got to add "Advanced JS" to their resume!

dang• 5 years ago

Please don't do this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

distrill3• 5 years ago

It's definitely intentional

babyshake3• 5 years ago

It is strange that it doesn't use any type of animated transition so it does look like a typical FOUC issue even though it probably isn't.

blsapologist422• 5 years ago

If it was intentional shouldn't it have some kind of fade animation?

lwansbrough• 5 years ago

It's definitely not intentional. If it was intentional it would be animated, and there's no indication in the HTML that it's anything more than a FOUC.

specialp3• 5 years ago

Meta has been live for a while as a Chan-Zuckerberg foundation project in open publishing. It is crazy they hijacked it for the corporation!

ButterWashed• 5 years ago

I'd say it's intentional, it highlights the transitional journey from one brand to another.

Unai• 5 years ago

Our Actions: Promoting Safety and Expression, Protecting Privacy and Security, Preparing for Elections, Responding to COVID-19

What a joke. Is there a more bluntly obvious PR than inverting everything you're being criticized for?

nazgulnarsil2• 5 years ago

It disabled my fucking back button. What a perfect encapsulation of what they are about.

Oddskar2• 5 years ago

There can be no going backwards. Only forward!

lewisj489• 5 years ago

You sure this isn't from FireFox Facebook container?

exdsq• 5 years ago

Doesn't even load properly for me, page is unresponsive

quickthrower23• 5 years ago

That page just gives me such a black mirror vibe.

djbusby3• 5 years ago

Holy crap! I drunkenly guessed that lame-ass name. Somebody just got $1 richer!

nescioquid• 5 years ago

In case you're still drunk, what will the new acronym be?

MAANG? MAGNA? AANGM?

djbusby3• 5 years ago

I'm hoping for some other rebrand and it can become MEGAMAN

notacoward• 5 years ago

If Google hadn't become Alphabet, we could have had MANGA.

babyshake3• 5 years ago

Remove Netflix and we've got MAGA.

speedgoose• 5 years ago

Congratulations for your rebranding! Now, can you respect us?

dbish• 5 years ago

MANGA sounds more fun then FAANG so that’s nice

jedberg• 5 years ago

If we didn't change G to A I don't think we'll change F to M either.

lapetitejort• 5 years ago

Well that's just your opinion MAAAN.

bytematic• 5 years ago

I like MANAA

aylmao• 5 years ago

MAAAN

vettedvat• 5 years ago

"He still has PTSD from his tour in NAAAM"

mherdeg• 5 years ago

There's a new ticker symbol for this one: FB->MVRS.

(There's already an ETF called "META"; 6% of its holdings are FB.)

I'm kind of curious about what will happen as either:

(1) confused investors buy into META instead of MVRS over the next few months

(2) confused investors can no longer find FB and instead buy FBK (FB Financial) or another one of the top Robinhood search results (FBHS, FBNC, FBC).

reayn• 5 years ago

At least the acronym that includes microsoft isn't offensive anymore, just a nice MAGMAN.

alanlammiman2• 5 years ago

I've often found the need to refer to Facebook, Apple, Google but excluding Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft (ie in the context specifically of consumer internet, mobile, social but not ecommerce, b2b or streaming), but have shied away from FAG. GAF ('gaffe') would be great, but not sure anyone would understand it.

mandeepj• 5 years ago

Is n’t MAGNA better?

kroltan4• 5 years ago

Not if you read Japanese comics, or if you speak Portuguese.

aaaaaaaaaaab• 5 years ago

If you replace F with M, you must replace G with A as well.

ModernMech• 5 years ago

MANAA

tasogare• 5 years ago

In France it's GAFAM that is most used, which makes sense since Microsoft is way more influential on the tech scene than Netflix, which is just a content provider.

dekhn2• 5 years ago

it's really FAAMG in the US too, the people who coined the phrase were confused.

philwelch• 5 years ago

I think FAANG is more often used as a career benchmark, i.e. working at Netflix looks good on your resume and pays well.

p4bl0• 5 years ago

GAFAM should now be replaced by MAGMA. It better represents the evil that will burn you alive.

endisneigh2• 5 years ago

well G is not A, so it would be MAAAN.

used in a sentence:

MAAAN, why can't I get some money.

mortenjorck• 5 years ago

Stick it to the MAAAN!

systemvoltage• 5 years ago

Netflix got shoved into this for no reason. It does not fit as "Big Tech".

timbit422• 5 years ago

Without Netflix we've got MAGA. Can't say I like it.

broof• 5 years ago

Well I don’t think the acronym for Facebook Amazon Apple Google would’ve been palatable

Apocryphon4• 5 years ago

The reason was because of stocks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech#FAANG

babelfish• 5 years ago

Why not?

hajile• 5 years ago

Netflix is currently 12-13% of all internet traffic down from around 15% or so.

Dialing in a little, they peaked out at something like 40% of all US internet traffic 4-5 years ago.

CookiesOnMyDesk• 5 years ago

I'm gonna miss FAGMAN.

vineyardmike6• 5 years ago

You're the only one.

crocodiletears• 5 years ago

Yeah, I liked that one.

bostik• 5 years ago

If you ignore Netflix, you can get a pretty close approximation what this is all about.

ksec• 5 years ago

MAGMA

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon

( Netflix doesn't belong to Big Tech )

hoelle• 5 years ago

MAAMA

(Google is now Alphabet)

e12e• 5 years ago

Google should probably be Alphabet, though?

  Microsoft
  Apple
  Meta
  Amazon
  Alphabet

odiroot• 5 years ago

Can we finally remove Netflix which doesn't fit in here? We can always replace it with Microsoft.

spookthesunset3• 5 years ago

Yeah, I dunno how netflix is in that acronym and not Microsoft. If you are gonna put in "netflix" might as well include salesforce, dropbox or github.

astlouis443• 5 years ago

They want to own the SEO around the "metaverse", so renaming their company to half the world means they dominate all search around it. Genius move, Mark.

imilk• 5 years ago

If that was the goal, there are many many ways that a company with the resources of Facebook could dominate rankings for a term without renaming their entire company a subset of that term.

rchaud7• 5 years ago

Their rivals own the search engines though.

rvz4• 5 years ago

It is been finally admitted.

Facebook Inc. aka Meta Inc. is going to kill Apple and put an end to the iPhone.

Going to watch this.

To Downvoters: Here's a reminder of how wrong the HN bubble was back then: [0] [1]

This is the same place that reacted to Facebook acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp to being the dumbest decisions Mark Zuckerberg made and now it became a $1T company with billions in profit and billions in monthly active users.

If users cared about privacy, why are they still on WhatsApp and Instagram and failed to move elsewhere? Exactly because the money, creators, social inertia and followers are still there.

We'll come back in 10 years and we'll see if you still like Apple and Google's walled gardens and 30% taxes.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840&p=2

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266796

not2b• 5 years ago

And how are they going to do that? Do they think people will discard their phones, replace them with next-gen Google Glass, live in the "metaverse" and let Zuck listen in on every interaction? Surely this will kill Apple dead.

jimkleiber7• 5 years ago

Exactly, all hail King Zuckerberg?

Snark aside, if something like this virtual world were to be created, I would want more democratic representation, not where one person can rule for life.

wut42• 5 years ago

wat.

rvz4• 5 years ago

   yes.

and you are going to watch them do it on 'the metaverse'.

seanalltogether• 5 years ago

So is this like Google -> Alphabet where it's mostly a behind-the-scenes type thing?

rvz4• 5 years ago

   yes.

On top of that it seems that the interoperable metaverse is where the future is heading. Not an Apple or Google walled garden of apps and is reinforced by Oculus being integrated in the 'glasses' and a new ecosystem will be created from that.

They seem to be on to something.

awestroke• 5 years ago

Reading about this company just drains my energy and enthusiasm right away. Can't put my finger on why.

Havoc2• 5 years ago

Can't put my finger on why.

Cause they're evil like a certain other company but managed to skip straight over the "Don't be evil" phase.

achr2• 5 years ago

You know in the Matrix how human's are the batteries? Well "Meta" is powered in a similar way, except it is your basic humanity (emotions, attention, engagement, self perception) that they drain to keep the lights on.

jazzyjackson6• 5 years ago

oh my god monsters inc was an allegory for social media, profit via harvesting fear, laughter, empathy and anger

r-r-r• 5 years ago

Nicely translates to "(shes's) dead" in Hebrew...

sushsjsuauahab2• 5 years ago

I believe the original Facebook name in Chinese (Mandarin) sounded something like "have to die" as well haha

yunusabd• 5 years ago

You're right, "Fei Si Bu Ke" in Chinese, "非死不可", which literally means "have to die".

azth• 5 years ago

Similar in Arabic (maita).

nyt-maps2• 5 years ago

My god, if you get it, you get it.

They are going all in on metaverse / have decided that the future of oculus is the primary long term bet, not facebook itself.

And they have the money to make it so.

This is incredibly scary, and probably a good investment.

bigdict• 5 years ago

Or maybe they have nothing else in the portfolio to bet on?

0x4d464d483• 5 years ago

Sounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me.

Anyone know if people there are heavily influenced by his work?

Kinrany4• 5 years ago

Sounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me.

How so? Searching for "metaverse" on LW yields 9 results, most of them are irrelevant.

rhcom2• 5 years ago

My kneejerk reaction is this will probably waste a lot of their money without much traction. But I'm also happy about Facebook wasting a bunch of their money...

aerovistae• 5 years ago

For real. This is the least "incredibly scary" thing I can think of.

whywhywhywhy• 5 years ago

All depends if they can deliver on AR before anyone else.

Gotta remember outside of Oculus, their entire product portfolio exists on top of the platforms of their competitors. This is their play to own the entire thing from the foundation up and the resources they'll be willing to use to accomplish that will be huge and really their only competition is Apple because Google gave up.

iaml• 5 years ago

My kneejerk reaction is that some projects with "meta" in the name might get into legal troubles out of the blue.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

admittedly it s a much better investment of their money than investing in spying tech. The Quest is really great product

ra7• 5 years ago

Don’t like Facebook one bit, but Zuck is almost always spot on with his bets. So yes, incredibly scary as it has a high likelihood of succeeding.

jimkleiber7• 5 years ago

Yea, watching some of the demo made me think of how deeply involved people got with The Sims. A platform where people could actually be their own Sim?

Maybe Second Life and those didn't take off as much because the technology wasn't yet there.

That being said, I still don't want Zuckerberg to be the king of it, but there are plenty of possibilities with high-definition VR/AR tech.

adpirz• 5 years ago

This discounts a lot of failures and products without real success:

- Facebook Apps

- Facebook Home

- Facebook Workplace

- Facebook Portal

- Facebook Essentials

What he's done well: found promising competition and subsumed them.

I think AR is going to be a huge part of the future. I don't think Facebook is going to lead that effort, not because I don't want them to (though I don't), but because they don't have a track record of building anything worthwhile outside of their core offering (ie, the Facebook product).

mrkramer5• 5 years ago

Don’t like Facebook one bit, but Zuck is almost always spot on with his bets. So yes, incredibly scary as it has a high likelihood of succeeding.

Instagram was growing like crazy, even faster than Facebook in its early days so acquisition was no-brainer. Instagram used Facebook's social graph so acquisition made even more sense.

On the other hand WhatsApp had hundreds millions users at the time of acquisition and Larry Page was very close to acquiring it before Zuck but Facebook offered more money that's why it turned out to be one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of Internet($19bn). WhatsApp's huge userbase and rapid growth could've endangered Facebook Messenger that Zuck was about to separate from main Facebook app and make it standalone instant messaging Facebook app.

So both Instagram and WhatsApp were no-brainer and made perfect sense and Facebook had cash pile to do it so they did it.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

The things zuck bought were already successful. It was more about stopping them from becoming too successful.

AlexandrB5• 5 years ago

Honestly, I think this is less scary than having Facebook acting as a "public square". A meta-verse has a higher bar of entry than a website - including specialized hardware - and it's less likely that governments and businesses will distribute information exclusively in some meta-verse vs. it just being another channel for content distribution.

nyt-maps2• 5 years ago

Websites once required "specialized hardware". And if you've got today's top end VR rigs, it's sorta obvious that the world is going to go this way - it's too good, and productivity is enhanced on the level of "bicycle for the mind". Plus it'll get way cheaper in the future. Note that I'm not talking about entertainment usecases, which are also good - I'm saying metaverse is clearly the future of work, with massive ramifications if Meta is able to invest enough to make it appealing to regular people. And I think Facebook has way more than enough resources to make this a reality.

Right now, work in the metaverse still looks like 8+ emulated screens floating in a sphere around you. And this is probably not the long term best way to work. The real question is what are the new primitives, is there a new underlying platform, can everyone get equal access to that platform, and who owns that platform.

Just like Apple is making intel chips obsolete with the M1 on Mac, Meta probably is aiming to make laptops obsolete/niche in the long run.

swalsh4• 5 years ago

I can't tell you how many times i've had political conversations in VR while playing a game. It's not super common, but it happens.

I kind of fear a day when i'm just having a casual conversation with someone, and suddenly their voice becomes garbled becauese an AI detected they were telling me some "misinformation".

rchaud7• 5 years ago

The cost of these devices will fall over time. About a billion people's first internet connected device was a $50 phone, not a $500 laptop.

Closi• 5 years ago

I think their internal definition of metaverse is probably less literal than people in the media seem to picture - I think they are actually betting on the future of however people communicate, whatever that ends up looking like, be that WhatsApp, social media, VR or something else entirely.

meheleventyone2• 5 years ago

Even their presentation showed that with a solid mix of different ways of communicating and I'm pretty sure that wasn't just accidental. On one level its nice to see a much more expansive definition of metaverse (which IMO already exists) but on another terrifying that FB wants to be part of basically every human interaction.

deelowe2• 5 years ago

I hope they have serious plans for changing how VR works today. VR quickly loses it's appeal after a few hours. The isolation it brings with it is a huge issue. AR holds more promise in terms of mass appeal but I'm not sure we have that one quite figured out yet technically and from a UX perspective.

jimkleiber7• 5 years ago

I know very little about VR so maybe this will be very off.

My guess is they want to address that isolation aspect by making it feel better to interact with others, bringing more people together in the VR space.

But this is me interpreting your "the isolation it brings with it" as people just exploring VR by themselves.

Did you mean something else?

drcode• 5 years ago

Yeah, I'm a VR nerd but I now find that wearing a VR helment for too long creates a kind of existential loneliness that will be hard to solve with better technology.

silisili5• 5 years ago

Not a chance. I've been wrong about a lot of things tech, probably even most things, but this isn't something I think most people want.

Metaverses have always been niche. Most people don't like things attached to their head. Remember 3D TVs?

But, perhaps you and they are right. For the first time in my life, I honestly feel like 'if this is the future, I want no part in it.' Please don't take this as like, suicidal or anything, more maybe going off grid or moving to another country.

gitfan863• 5 years ago

You are right. Pride comes before a fall, and Zuck thinks he is better than Cook, Musk, Bezos, by building the multiverse he will restore his place as the greatest technologist of our time

Havoc2• 5 years ago

this isn't something I think most people want.

I think it is. Not the current crap hardware, but bit further advanced it definitely has a place.

The gamers are basically on board already, streamers would benefit too and porn has a big chunk in VR already.

Sharp headset that can render text clearly would be huge.

acchow• 5 years ago

A common argument for why humanity has never encountered extra-terrestrial life is that any hyper advanced civilization likely moved into a virtual world. Do you believe this is unlikely and humanity is not headed in this direction?

newby• 5 years ago

I honestly feel like 'if this is the future, I want no part in it.'

I feel like that about ever larger part of the whole tech world. I am torn - I can still muster a lot of techno-optimism when I think for example about possible benefits of advanced AIs for humanity. But than I imagine the world where the most advanced AIs are controlled by corporations like Google and Facebook... I have a bad feeling about this.

I am trying to find some reasonable middle ground between becoming a luddite and just continuing like I do not see all those unforeseen negative impacts produced by the genie that was once called the IT revolution.

cranesnakecode3• 5 years ago

They aren't going after the people who have realized over-technicalized life is bad for humans. They're going after the kids who grow up in it and will take until their 30s to realize they've had depersonalization disorders their entire lives.

dbbk3• 5 years ago

3D TVs were the clearest market signal that the market doesn't want this. It was not subtle. And yet everyone just acts like that didn't happen.

quickthrower23• 5 years ago

I think you soon won’t need much attached to your head. What about when the tech is a light as a pair of glasses - then contact lenses. Far fetched? In 1995, when mobile phones were for the rich, and internet for the geeks, tell people you will be required to own a mobile phone and an online account in order to be allowed in a shop. That’s what it is in Australia right now.

KennyBlanken• 5 years ago

We can call them whatever we want to. Fuck them for trying to take over both "meta" and "metaverse." This is them trying to become _the_ VR world just by having _the right name_.

I don't know anyone that calls "xfinity" anything but "comcast." I'm pretty sure "xfinity" was them trying to get away from their nickname "comcrap."

Imagine if the world collectively said "no" and kept right on calling them Facebook?

They're going to run around slapping anyone who uses "meta" or "metaverse" with C&D letters figuring nobody will have the money to fight them in court.

I'd chip in to the legal fund for whoever says "see you in court" to Facebook. I bet a lot of people would. Maybe someone like the EFF should set up a "meta defense" warchest.

I-M-S• 5 years ago

That kinda happened to Alphabet - everybody still calls them Google

darthvoldemort• 5 years ago

Maybe I'm too old, but I don't know a single person with Oculus, not even among my younger coworkers.

I don't discount that it could be the next big thing, because wtf do I know, but it feels very niche to me, and certainly not something that can get the engagement like a phone can. And in terms of money, Facebook itself is a printing press, I wonder what the business model is for this? Selling games or experiences? Billboards in an AR world?

cronix• 5 years ago

I wonder what the business model is for this

Addicting people to living in a fake world where anything is seemingly possible, and then exploiting it. Basically the same M.O. as their other products, but on a "next level."

y4mi2• 5 years ago

I got one. My honest opinion is that it's potential is immense, but I wouldn't suggest anyone to get one atm.

Professional headsets will likely become more widespread over the coming years and I fully expect that most desk jobs will replace their displays with a headset... But that's still at least 10 yrs off, likely longer. A prerequisite would be that it's not as stuffy/heavy to wear, but that's already happening at a surprising rate.

It also makes remote contacts (i.e. remote work, family calls etc) very different, as oculus just added face tracking to their newest headsets... So your avatars face mirrors your real face.

The presence you feel in these contexts is hard to explain and has to be experienced imo.

JohnFen4• 5 years ago

That's my experience, too. I know a lot of people who are very into tech, across the entire age range. I don't know a single person who owns one of these. But I think they're mostly used by the hardcore gamer crowd, and I only know a couple of those (and neither have a VR headset).

MikusR3• 5 years ago

The only person with Oculus is Mark Zuckerber as he owns Facebook that owns Oculus. Maybe you mean Quest or Rift? I personally don't know anybody who owns an iPad.

ssully2• 5 years ago

I don't think this downplays Oculus, but they also announced today that they are going to start scaling back Facebook integration with Oculus and start allowing other login methods besides Facebook.

Unfortunately outside of Tweets, this is the best story I found on it at the moment: https://www.ign.com/articles/oculus-facebook-requirement-end...

RC_ITR3• 5 years ago

Keep in mind he used very specific working "personal facebook account" and just announced a new company name 'Meta.'

To me that points to a 'log in with Meta' option.

tinktank• 5 years ago

Meh. Many better companies have tried and failed. Good luck to them but all I have for them is a shrug

jazzyjackson6• 5 years ago

Is this bet on VR making the goggles a hardware requirement? So this new world will only be available to those who can afford gaming hardware and a high speed internet connection?

Ansil8492• 5 years ago

In London, in the area around the London Eye, there is a tourist trap that offers a very poor 'haunted house' type of attraction, usually something having to do with zombies. As each iteration of this tourist trap gains a reputation for being total rubbish and gains one star reviews online, every few months the attraction rebrands to another name.

gitfan863• 5 years ago

At least at that place everyone is in on the scam. Facebook execs have to smile and say good idea to Mark, when all they want to do is tell him that is stupid

thebean11• 5 years ago

Sounds like a pretty naive take, given how successful the company has been under Mark..

CodeGlitch• 5 years ago

Takeaways in the UK also do this after the Foods Standards Agency shuts them down.

edgriebel2• 5 years ago

Same thing happens with Chinese restaurants in the states. New name, new sign out front, but oddly enough same fixtures, same items on the menu, and same folks behind the counter.

antiterra• 5 years ago

This doesn't sound quite right, what's one of the names?

The London Dungeon is near the Eye and has been around since the 70s, albeit in different forms and location. They moved closer to the Eye due to rail station construction in 2013, I believe? Down the street from the old London Dungeons location is the London Bridge Experience, which generally gets better reviews and doesn't appear to be owned by Merlin Entertainment. I'd avoid both, but neither appear to match your description.

Ansil8492• 5 years ago

No, I don't mean any of the flagship attractions like the Dungeon. The one I'm thinking of is small one on the strip by the Aquarium.

chestertn• 5 years ago

It is so dumb it might work.

tomalpha• 5 years ago

Is this a change of company name or is the Facebook product/app/site also changing?

(As an aside the GDPR popup still asks me about “Facebook” cookies)

BrokrnAlgorithm• 5 years ago

I actually agree with the vision, like its clear that media convergence will all kinda lead us into a common tech space, be it AR / VR / 3D whatever.

But I don't think it needs to be called metaverse. We should have another name for it. Not to give "Meta" as a company the same honor as google received for "googling".

verdverm• 5 years ago

"merged reality" as the digital world merges onto IRL?

fullshark3• 5 years ago

Not sure I agree with the vision but i applaud any company investing millions (billions?) in trying to shake up the internet in 2021.

mabub24• 5 years ago

So, cut through the brand/marketing-speak and this is just like Alphabet, right?

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

What an odd move; how on earth do they expect to defend that trademark?

djbusby3• 5 years ago

Lawyers, guns and money.

knowsuchagency• 5 years ago

A name to signify what facebook has METAstasized into

czottmann4• 5 years ago

Still a terrible, terrible organisation that's detrimental to societies and humankind as such.

goatlover5• 5 years ago

Is it FB or social media and big tech in general? I'm confused by the laser focus on FB all of a sudden.

distrill3• 5 years ago

I don't think it's particularly sudden, although I am also confused by the laser focus.

jeromegv• 5 years ago

FB being the biggest and the one most likely to shape our society, they deserve the spotlight.

viro3• 5 years ago

Its people that are the problem, they are just using Facebook as a scapegoat. No matter what they do, they(FB) will get attacked by 50% of the country ... Remove GOP voices spreading crazy shit .. They are suddenly suppressing political voices(censorship). Leave the content up and suddenly Facebook is responsible for domestic terrorist attacks. Honestly Facebook has literally been begging congress to regulate them. The problem isn't Facebook its that congress refuses to do it job and now Americans expect a private company to regulate speech for nearly every country FB operates in.

coolso2• 5 years ago

I'm confused by the laser focus on FB all of a sudden.

You have to look at in the context of the 2016 election. Once it was discovered that the winning team utilized Facebook in a way the losing team had no concept of (or more likely they simply didn’t use said concept as effectively), Facebook has been singled out and targeted by most media outlets for being evil and in need of strict government regulations, to protect the children and democracy and society, among other things.

Yes, FB had negative press prior. But this was the clear turning point in press coverage and governmental oversight and it was like a light switch.

I can’t say I’m disappointed in the slightest about that, or that they’re wrong. I despise Facebook. But I do find the reasoning behind this all a very disturbing extension of the “cancel culture” we’re in today. The establishment doesn’t like not having a monopoly on the spread of information, and it is fighting back.

czottmann4• 5 years ago

If you think the laser focus happened "all of a sudden" I believe you haven't been paying enough attention. ;) I think outside of the U.S. there has been more concern about FB's awful track record for years by now.

But to answer your quest: For me it's their wish to be the biggest dog on Earth, aiming to be "everyone's internet" (especially in poorer, non-western nations) while at the same time wilfully ignoring the responsibilities that come with it.

Most other players are also bad, I guess, but so far not many of them are able to do that. much. damage. to society while putting profits first no matter the cost, while trying to game the system no matter the cost, while scorching the Earth to stave off perceived competition, while assuming they're above the law.

I'm certain that if Twitter, Telegram, Baidu, VK et al are having their own skeletons in the closet but they're not in the spotlight as much (yet).

(Edited for grammar.)

coolspot• 5 years ago

Twitter is 100 times more toxic than FB, but somehow everyone is focused on FB.

I guess someone powerful is annoyed.

floren• 5 years ago

Journalists live their lives on Twitter.

missedthecue• 5 years ago

I agree. Twitter is a machine devised to draw people into clapbacks, cheapshots, fights, spats, and arguments. It's completely toxic.

But journalists love Twitter. Every other account is a journalist or media personality. So all the "social media bad" articles implicate Facebook.

liaukovv• 5 years ago

My mom isnt on twatter

buitreVirtual2• 5 years ago

Whataboutism is not a good defense for FB. All social media companies profiting from hate and addiction are evil.

Oddskar2• 5 years ago

Maybe you missed the part where FB undermined the US election?

InitialLastName• 5 years ago

FB is 10 times larger than Twitter, and is diversified across a fairly large number of different platforms.

kingkawn• 5 years ago

This transition has been hyped up since I was in college in the early 2000s at least, where I remember attending presentations on Internet 2.0 and other such buzzwords. Mass market does not want to wear the goggles or do some elaborate version of Second Life. If anything people want less screen-time rather than an even more isolating intrusive version of it.

specialp3• 5 years ago

The choice of "Meta" is very interesting. Chan-Zuckerberg started a project called "Meta" to increase the dissemination of science. This was a project going on for a while now [1]

What does this mean for that?

https://sociable.co/science/aaron-swartz-chan-zuckerberg-met...

avsbst3• 5 years ago

They started the process of shuttering it ~6 months ago. My partner worked there for ~3 years. Despite meeting all their metrics for user growth and activity it was a decision that came out of the blue. Guess we know why though? Can't have it conflicting with the brand.

I remember that two weeks before the decision came down, and she and her team got blindsided, she told me how a bioeng researcher emailed her telling her that without their tool they never would've found the connections and research needed to solve the problem they were working on. Not sure why they didn't just rebrand the tool and team, but it's probably just a blip to the facebook execs.

pazimzadeh• 5 years ago

Looks like it's still up? https://www.meta.org/

losvedir• 5 years ago

I suspect we will be awash in critical comments shortly, so let me just say I'm kind of excited about this.

Don't forget that the internet was originally a military project. I'm excited to see a huge corporation going all in on VR and AR. It has the potential to be really interesting technology, and the research in displays, sensors, and other hardware and software won't go to waste.

If "Meta" is the new ARPANET, I wonder what the new CERN and web will be.

mempko2• 5 years ago

Google is the AT&T of the internet. Meta is the AT&T of the metaverse. In modern times, there is no CERN. Just AT&T.

IceWreck2• 5 years ago

If "Meta" is the new ARPANET, I wonder what the new CERN and web will be.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. This so called "Metaverse" will be another proprietary project that may or may not gain traction unless they open it up for federation. And facebook is all about walled gardens so they won't.

And if they do, how do we know that 10 years later they wont shutter up their instance, cut off the federated parts to monopolize their own (presumably biggest) instance.

vineyardmike6• 5 years ago

And facebook is all about walled gardens so they won't.

They had tons of Open APIs and stuff until people abused it and the CEO had to go to congress, so idk if the blame is solely on the company.

mechanical_bear• 5 years ago

Except ARPANET and CERN conducted their research for a larger audience, much of it making its way to the public. FB/Meta research is largely proprietary.

neither_color• 5 years ago

Im excited for this too, Meta seems to be his passion project that he wants to be remembered for, and if he sticks to his word of opening up Oculus for easier development and letting you sign in without FB this will really take off. The comments here remind me of slashdot comments saying the iPod sucked because it had less storage than a zen nano and was overpriced, or the iphone would flop because business users needed a keyboard.

daviding• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story.

Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? Federate it a bit more than they are comfortable with, to at least give it a chance. I could see this flubbing out hard otherwise.

I'm personally keen on the AR/VR space (surrounded by headsets here), but the early adopters are so polarized about Facebook/Oculus's involvement. I don't know if a rebrand (is this really that?) would be enough for the tech crowd to forget and move on.

echelon2• 5 years ago

We could rename metaverse. Maybe derive prefixes from chemistry?

Meta, ortho, para.

Paraverse. Orthoverse.

We can't keep using metaverse now.

Kinrany4• 5 years ago

Interverse?

anttiharju2• 5 years ago

Subverse? Universe within a universe, a sub universe.

shaunxcode• 5 years ago

I am fond of holoverse. Holonic not holographic.

tomp• 5 years ago

Internetverse

Neverse for short.

mattowen_uk3• 5 years ago

My job has now become more difficult:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Identity_Integration....

rimliu• 5 years ago

Perverse.

joshenberg• 5 years ago

That's what I wonder. Early VR adopters/technologists hate what happened to Oculus and there aren't a lot of newcomers to that market. I don't think cheaper headsets are going to fix that in the near future so I don't know whom they're targeting. Seems risky to lean into something where the experts already think you screwed up.

b9a2cab5• 5 years ago

Quest 2 is outselling past VR headsets by leaps and bounds according to news reports. The decision to make a standalone headset and build their own app platform was absolutely the right one from a growth standpoint, even if the hardcore VR consumers aren't biting. Early VR adopters are going to buy the next best product and have no loyalty.

eli• 5 years ago

Oculus sold 2 of every 3 VR headsets last quarter. If there's a lesson here, it's that you can't extrapolate mass market appeal from what early adopters think.

Karawebnetwork• 5 years ago

I would argue that early adopters/technologists of VR are comparable to PC gamers and Quest adopters are comparable to console gamers.

Both have a purpose, both are subsets of the same demographic... but both vote very differently with their wallets.

Personally, I don't mind FB taking over the casual market. There are still alternatives and the technology will advance faster with such a big company behind it.

That being said, I won't be touching the Metaverse unless I can't avoid it.

swalsh4• 5 years ago

There needs to be many metaverses, and NFT's should be able to be shared between them. It's dangerous to think about the prospect of a major company like Facebook (Or a DAO for that matter) locking up the entire universe.

jimkleiber7• 5 years ago

Agreed, I'm pro multimetaverse. I'm also pro democratic-representation metaverse.

vineyardmike6• 5 years ago

Why NFT? Why can't we just "import jpeg" instead of "link NFT"?

bduerst4• 5 years ago

I thought the market has repeatedly shown there isn't much demand for persistent virtual worlds?

ARandomerDude• 5 years ago

Don't question it, just drink your Kool-Aid.

Kye2• 5 years ago

VRChat seems to have landed on something close to the right balance of whatever it takes to make it happen. It's apparently easy enough for someone to make a whole meme world for an event in the news in time for it to be relevant: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/11/9/21557029/four-season...

The video in the initial tweet is up to 2.1 million views: https://twitter.com/thecoopertom/status/1325710953305026560?...

VRChat or someone building on their proof of concept is likely to make it happen. It won't be Facebook with its VR Slack.

bmhin• 5 years ago

the market has repeatedly shown there isn't much demand for persistent virtual worlds

I don't know if you have a more narrow view of this idea or specifically mean VR/AR, but that just sounds like what massively multiplayer online (MMO) games such as Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft are. I think Roblox is even a broader use case, though I am fairly unfamiliar with that.

MMOs have been very viable from both a business and user stand point and have been a fairly big thing for going on a quarter century or so at this point. Whether these branch into more of the Second Life non-game social space or into being largely AR/VR driven is pretty up in the air, but it's not some sci-fi concept really.

Tiktaalik• 5 years ago

What you mean to tell me folks didn't love Playstation Home?

ajmurmann• 5 years ago

"I've come to the insight that there really aren't any bad ideas at all. Only ideas at the wrong time.[not quite verbatim]" - Marc Andreesen

dbbk3• 5 years ago

You would be correct. I do not see any logical data to say that this is "the next big thing".

jfmc• 5 years ago

A Facebook-controlled metaverse, rising gas prices... it is only a matter of time that humans ends up being used as batteries.

glogla• 5 years ago

Fun fact, in Matrix (if that's what you're referring to) people were originally enslaved by the machines to provide compute capacity of their brains. The battery part came later, when someone (studio executives?) jumped in, and said that's too smart and people wouldn't get it so it was changed to batteries.

cultofmetatron• 5 years ago

ready player one's whole premise was that is was too expensive to travel and everyone volunteers to live out their lives in a vr metaverse...

mdoms• 5 years ago

Federate it a bit more than they are comfortable with, to at least give it a chance.

I have yet to see a single federated system that has demonstrated commercial success. There's no reason to believe that strategy would result in greater success than Facebook's usual playbook, which is proven.

rektide2• 5 years ago

The world wide web used to have a host of proprietary servers for it, but those for the most part got eaten by Apache (which latter renamed to Apache Http Server). And then a host of new open-source http servers and libraries.

Sometimes what's good for markets & the world doesn't have to be owned & commercial. Sometimes the availability of resources such as info-resources like httpd can beget enormous commercial success while themselves not having much commercial success.

A Tim O'Reilly saying comes to mind: create more value than you capture. In some cases, without setting free the core idea & letting people run wild, you'll never stand a chance of capturing any value what-so-ever.

ssully2• 5 years ago

Our version of a persistent virtual space was never going to be like fiction. There will be 3 or more competing metaverses, none of which have any interoperability.

ryandrake• 5 years ago

Or hundreds of incompatible little ones. If VR really takes off "We need to add chat to our app" will become "We need to add our own metaverse to our app."

m4rtink• 5 years ago

That can actually end up more healthy overall & lead to some competition.

Having just one metaverse everyone uses seamed like the worst thing in Ready Player One - because then one entity can control it and for their rules and morals on all participants.

Much harder to do that with multiple competing incompatible metaverses.

jeffwask• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story.

One step closer to real life Shadowrun.

neuronexmachina• 5 years ago

Or Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which coined the term "metaverse."

randomsearch• 5 years ago

Facebook can’t even beat TikTok. They’r not going to win at building an alternate reality.

angelzen• 5 years ago

Who do you want to own it?

tlrobinson• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it.

I know I don't. It's a dystopian nightmare for an advertising company to be building "the metaverse".

I hope all the other players in this space band together and form an open, federated metaverse.

It's one use-case I can kind of see benefiting from blockchain protocols: enforcing digital scarcity in a federated metaverse, by recording transfers of avatars and assets between the "metaworlds" making up the metaverse ("digital identity scarcity" is still an unsolved problem though, I think)

charcircuit9• 5 years ago

enforcing digital scarcity in a federated metaverse

Until someone dumps it and reuploads whatever for free.

cpeterso• 5 years ago

I hope all the other players in this space band together and form an open, federated metaverse.

Seems unlikely. Google, Apple, and Microsoft would surely each want their own proprietary metaverses. Mozilla is experimenting in the metaverse space linking VR and web with Mozilla Hubs: https://hubs.mozilla.com/

jrochkind14• 5 years ago

What are the motivations of the other players?

enforcing digital scarcity in a federated metaverse

Yeah, I'm not interested, actively anti-interested, in the "metaverse" we are going to get, at all. Any "players in this space" that aren't motivated by selling user's personal data are instead motivated by selling users things they don't need.

danShumway5• 5 years ago

enforcing digital scarcity in a federated metaverse

I don't know, I feel this sentiment betrays a industry-wide common lack of imagination. We start building digital realities, and our first thought is to try and make them more crappy like the regular one?

Nobody really likes scarcity other than speculators and collectors. We shouldn't be trying to invent more of it, we shouldn't be trying to get rid of the advantages of digital abundance. We should instead be trying to manage and mitigate the limited forms of scarcity that still exist in digital systems -- a long term goal of the Internet should be the complete elimination of most non-physical scarcity. Every time we can make a new asset or utility stop being scarce, that's a step in the right direction.

It's a failure of creativity, vision, and (frankly) courage, that so many people in the tech industry are incapable/unwilling to imagine worlds that aren't artificially hobbled and restricted so that they mimic existing systems.

We build these incredible, world-changing technologies, and then instead of rethinking ownership or creator incentives we just waste a bunch of energy and time building little pretend speculative "art markets" and stressing out over whether somebody might copy and paste a file between two computers or share it online.

giantrobot5• 5 years ago

enforcing digital scarcity in a federated metaverse

Why in the hell would I want to enforce digital scarcity in a metaverse? Do we really need to make sure people in the metaverse are poor just like in the real world? If someone is going to shell out money for VR kit (and Internet access, etc) why should they have to pay more money for their avatar to have a particular set of clothes or accessory?

One of the great things about digital worlds/goods is they exist in microscopic (nanoscopic now) electrical circuits. They use practically no resources and can be duplicated for next to nothing. They also take up very little physical space to store. They're free from or at least resistant to most natural phenomena that create scarcity.

mrweasel• 5 years ago

While I’m not interested in VR at all, and only feel like should be used in limited areas, I agree on the issue of Facebook owning “the metaverse”. Many of the early adopters are already of Facebook and/or dislike the company, meaning that there are few people to help push the products.

hackernudes• 5 years ago

I think there is at least a chance that they handle Meta differently - at 1:28:24 in the keynote[1] Zuck says "...that means that, over time, you won't need to use Facebook to use our other services".

[1] https://www.facebook.com/facebookrealitylabs/videos/56153569...

RC_ITR3• 5 years ago

Yeah, he means you'll need a "Meta" account.

CerealFounder• 5 years ago

Dont worry. Unless they acquire it, they aint building it.

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

I'm personally keen on the AR/VR space (surrounded by headsets here), but the early adopters are so polarized about Facebook/Oculus's involvement.

There is no polarization at all. I don't know a single person who is happy about being forced to use FB in order to be able to use the equipment they have bought.

carbonguy5• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story.

I'm confident I don't want them to own it - or for it to be owned by a single party of any kind, for that matter.

Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow?

I mean, that would be nice for users, but:

a) I don't think Facebook is constitutionally* able to give up ad revenue gains: what they do is maximize ad revenue, basically

b) I strongly suspect they have other means at their disposal to maximize growth. After all, every FB-IG-WA user is a Meta user now, right? How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

And if that sounds insane, consider that this announcement is basically saying "we're betting our entire brand on this particular future" - I suspect they'll do everything in their power to make that bet succeed (or appear to succeed).

* in the sense of "this is the fundamental basis and goal of the company," not in a U.S.-founding-document sense

uuddlrlr3• 5 years ago

I don't think Facebook is constitutionally able to give up ad revenue gains

This "fiduciary duty" meme really needs to die.

Seriously the idea of fiduciary duty [to maximixe profit] is dystopian, corporations don't fuck us over because they have to they do it because they can.

Edit: clarify

Impossible2• 5 years ago

For b) assuming each Quest costs Meta around $400, and they are sending to 1B users, $400B, so about half their market cap and 10x yearly revenue :).

adventured• 5 years ago

How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

$200+ billion. They can't afford it. They couldn't get the manufacturing for it, either.

elil17• 5 years ago

As to point B, they don’t even need to send one to all users - just the ones they think will be cash cows for advertisers. Everyone with a income and behavior pattern that makes them a super valuable ad demographic (say, 5% or even 1% of users) gets one for free while the rest of us pay our way on.

cbtacy2• 5 years ago

How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

That's the wrong question.

The right question is "how many FB users would accept a free headset that advertisers paid for in exchange for access to your data and exclusive rights to place ads in front of you?"

jrochkind14• 5 years ago

At this point I'm confident I don't want there to be "a metaverse" at all, because under our current social and cultural systems, I am confident it will be very very bad no matter who owns it.

ben_w5• 5 years ago

How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

About 0.6-1 trillion dollars, give or take.

Tenoke2• 5 years ago

How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

20-50 times what they earn per user.

alasdair_2• 5 years ago

b) How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

$300 * 3 billion people, so $900 Billion give or take which coincidentally is right around the market cap of the entire company.

ipaddr• 5 years ago

How much would it cost to just send every one of them an Oculus headset for free?

3 billion fb users x 100 per unit = 300 billion

A letter to everyone would cost 3 billion

rl32• 5 years ago

It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story.

That feeling when you don't have a single original idea, and unironically view Black Mirror episodes as a blueprint.

gscott• 5 years ago

Welcome to Ready Player One

AlexandrB5• 5 years ago

Except it's run by Nolan Sorrento from day one.

api2• 5 years ago

Virtual reality was always dystopian. It's what happens when we don't have a frontier and turn inward to computer aided fantasy and isolation.

One of the best dystopian explanations for the Fermi paradox is that intelligences eventually figure out how to immerse themselves in high fidelity fantasy worlds and basically sit around and masturbate until some black swan event like a planet killer astroid or a gamma ray burst destroys them. Maybe it's easier to create an endlessly gratifying simulation than it is to build a starship.

There seem to be three possible futures on offer today:

(1) A Brave New World with AR, VR, social media dopamine loops, ARGs and conspiracy LARPs, cheap drugs, and sex robots where the meaning of life is to withdraw into a fantasy world and masturbate until you die. This offers the comfort of rewards without challenges.

(2) Reactionary movements against modernity itself, proposing that we instead re-embrace feudalism or some kind of totalitarianism where the state or some Ubermensch gives us purpose. This includes authoritarian fundamentalist religious movements, the alt-right, neoreaction, etc. This offers the comfort of the "devil we know" and futures that resemble our past.

(3) SpaceX Starship and the next frontier, a future where we embrace difficult adventures in the real world with high risk but high payoff. This offers the least comfort but a lot of growth and experience.

Choose wisely.

tsimionescu8• 5 years ago

There are also leftist visions of a future world where we actually address the core problems plaguing our world and give workers democratic control over their own work, instead of leaving that up to wage slave owners who view all of us as human resources.

unphased• 5 years ago

Maybe it's easier to create an endlessly gratifying simulation than it is to build a starship.

You say this with a maybe as though it isn't already a certainty.

Nothing can stop it from happening. There will always be brainpower available, willing, and capable of contributing to computer aided fantasy and isolation. Not that it has to necessarily be a bad thing, mind.

OTOH plenty of things could make it impossible to succeed with a starship.

314• 5 years ago

If those are the only three futures on offer then we should all subsidize PornHub's expansion into the metaverse promptly.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Someone will own it, every option involves human owners…

Tepix5• 5 years ago

Facebook is investing 10 billion dollars into the metaverse this year alone and will increase this amount in the future.

They can probably make the Metaverse an open standard like the web and still end up with one of the most popular hubs.

If people who value their privacy can setup their own hubs, i'm pretty much OK with Facebook speeding up the advancement of AR/VR technology for the next several years using their advertisement dollars.

micromacrofoot7• 5 years ago

They can probably make the Metaverse an open standard like the web

Thanks I needed the laugh.

6gvONxR4sf7o3• 5 years ago

There's a huge distinction that needs to be made between AR and VR. AR in public is a menace, for the same reason everyone not wearing one hated google glass.

gdilla• 5 years ago

It's their metaverse. A walled garden metaverse. So maybe that isn't really a metaverse, but what they want you to think about a metaverse.

dmix4• 5 years ago

Zuckerberg repeatedly tried to say it will be an open standard with interop like HTTP links. Zero indication what that means.

If I was FB I would have announced at least a protocol or some technical foundation, even if it's purely preview.

micromacrofoot7• 5 years ago

If what they're doing now is any indication, I don't think they'll succeed with it anyway. They've got almost zero credibility with anyone under 30.

Their existing prototypes are outrageously embarrassing. I'm the kind of person that has a hard time watching The Office because I feel second-hand embarrassment, and I can barely make it a minute in to any of their VR demos. They're so uncanny, awkward, and embarrassingly goofy. At least The Office has some endearing quality (sorry for the weird comparison).

I'm not sure if it's Mark Zuckerberg's influence or what... but everything about Facebook lacks some sort of jour de vive. Like, their idea of "making work fun" is stuff like... an astoundingly cringe-worth video about healthcare open-enrollment? This kind of thing dumbfounds me https://vimeo.com/639318528... and I don't even consider myself a cynical person.

All of this feels only a few degrees removed from Jonestown.

arduinomancer3• 5 years ago

They've got almost zero credibility with anyone under 30

I'm not a fan of facebook either but this is simply not true.

< 30 is the _largest_ proportion of facebook users

https://www.statista.com/statistics/376128/facebook-global-u...

Even putting Facebook aside Oculus is dominating the VR space due to cheap hardware, which I would bet is a ton of < 30 people.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/265018/proportion-of-dir...

My point here is consumers don't _actually_ care about company morals, despite the prevailing narrative.

lnanek2• 5 years ago

Are you sure you aren't living in a techie bubble? Oculus consistently tops the best selling headsets list at amazon cnet, PCMag, etc.. The only non-developers I know with headsets all have Oculus or more rarely PSVR. Maybe they aren't cutting edge, but everyday people can't afford cutting edge anyway.

They burned a lot of developer cred. by going back on the promise not to require Facebook login with Oculus, but the public at large has no knowledge of that. All the public knows is that it's decent hardware for a super low price compared to the competitors, it doesn't require a PC, and it's what most of their friends with a headset are using.

Can't really call having the most popular headset not succeeding, even if it is probably subsidized with their massive ads money making machine.

n1ghtmare_• 5 years ago

I feel exactly the same way about Memojis, yet people use them and apparently don’t find them as cringy as I do.

Krasnol• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story.

Wouldn't that be fitting because the word comes from a bad sci-fi pulp story?

dropnerd3• 5 years ago

every hn top thread about fb says "we don't want fb to do this" or "fb is evil"

whether you agree or disagree, the more interesting question is the details behind what Meta could build

the answer is not federation. federation doesn't scale.

rdrey2• 5 years ago

Could you flesh out the "federation doesn't scale" argument a bit?

dropnerd3• 5 years ago

ill bite. does someone want to explain when and how a federated system will reach mass adoption and not get rekt by competition?

oska• 5 years ago

the more interesting question

No, going back to your original premise the only thing 'interesting' for me about Facebook is how dismally awful the company is and how nakedly sociopathic Zuckerberg is.

stephenhuey• 5 years ago

75 minutes into his keynote, he said:

"…but connecting people was always much bigger…it was always clear that the dream was to feel present with the people we care about…here we are in 2021, and our devices are still designed around apps, not people. The experiences we’re allowed to build and use are more tightly controlled than ever, and high taxes on creative new ideas are stifling. This is not the way that we are meant to use technology. The Metaverse gives us an opportunity to change that, if we build it well. But it’s going to take all of us…Together, we can create a more open platform."

When he says this, I hear between the lines that the platform will be open to all contributors as long as the "open platform" belongs to Meta. How does he not realize that by seeking to dominate and own this "open platform" instead of working outside of his company to build a truly open platform with others is actually open?

Does he not read enough sci fi or literature in general to know that by having so much power and not seeking to let go a bit more, he opens himself up to the same risks and temptations faced by myriad dystopian villains?

1vuio0pswjnm7• 5 years ago

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjb485/zuckerberg-facebook-n...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/faceboo...

The BuzzFeed journalist shared a video on her Twitter that illustrates use of metaverse by Facebook HR

https://twitter.com/katienotopoulos

https://player.vimeo.com/video/639318528 (Ctrl+U, Ctrl+F mp4)

https://archive.org/download/facebook_open_enrollment_2022/F...

What the journalists are not discussing is whether and how "the metaverse" will be used to surveil people and support advertising. No discussion of whether/how it embodies "privacy by design". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design

matheusmoreira• 5 years ago

I don't want any company to own it. I want it to be open technology that somehow exists completely independently of companies and governments. If a company must own it, I certainly don't want it to be an advertising company, least of all Facebook.

rhizome• 5 years ago

What do you mean, "not sure?!"

"If you can't change the product, change the packaging."

trentnix• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it.

I don't want them to own it. I'm 100% sure.

fabianhjr• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story.

No one should own it, the only non-dystopian metaverse would be open hardware and software and decentralized/p2p connectivity.

theelous3• 5 years ago

not sure

I am absolutely certain that nobody should own it.

xg15• 5 years ago

I think immersive virtual worlds are an absolutely fascinateing topic - even though I don't see how our current ecosystem of centralized services and locked-down devices on the one hand and artificial scarcity by blockchain anarchists on the other hand can lead to anything desirable here.

But with the current discussion, I'm surprised we haven't heard more from other players in the field except facebook. What about the makers of VRChat or Second Life? Metaverse-style virtual realities are their bread and butter - and now for the first time, we have a discussion about this subject that includes the larger public. Shouldn't they be all over this?

And yet, the only ones talking about the "Metaverse" seems to be Facebook - pardon, Meta. So I wonder, if this whole Metaverse discussion an actual discussion at all or is it just Facebook kicking up dust?

BummerCloud• 5 years ago

In the recent Stratechery interview with Zuckerberg, Mark seemed to indicate FB has no intention of _owning_ the metaverse. Rather, they want to build the technology and platforms that will go towards enabling it. His quote below:

We don’t think about this as if different companies are going to build different metaverses. We think about it in terminology like the Mobile Internet. You wouldn’t say that Facebook or Google are building their own Internet and I don’t think in the future it will make sense to say that we are building our own metaverse either. I think we’re each building different infrastructure and components that go towards hopefully helping to build this out overall and I think that those pieces will need to work together in some ways.

https://stratechery.com/2021/an-interview-with-mark-zuckerbe...

djokkataja• 5 years ago

You wouldn’t say that Facebook or Google are building their own Internet

Of course not; buying up competitors is much more practical (why build what you can buy?). So this is presumably the same strategy Facebook plans for any competing companies that make successful use of whatever open systems underlie "the metaverse".

oarabbus_• 5 years ago

Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up

Did you bother to watch the Keynote? That's what they said they are doing.

arduinomancer3• 5 years ago

On one hand I’m not a big fan of Facebook

But it is pretty amazing to have so much money and focus being thrown behind VR/AR

There are a ton of problems that need to be solved in that space: graphics/geometry algorithms, image processing, hardware, interface/IO, neural stuff

paulgb• 5 years ago

I worry that the Facebook association is actually holding back VR. I know a few people who have expressed interest in an Oculus headset, but for the Facebook association. But the amount of capital Facebook is throwing after it surely makes other vendors hesitant to compete.

Klonoar• 5 years ago

This is more or less how I feel about it - I refuse to touch anything VR-related that is associated with Facebook as an entity.

reaperducer• 5 years ago

There are a ton of problems that need to be solved in that space: graphics/geometry algorithms, image processing, hardware, interface/IO,

...advertising, spying, tracking, tabulating, monetizing, engaging, profiting, controlling...

shoto_io2• 5 years ago

Let’s have a “Meta” discussion about this rebrand.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

rebranding seems to be in vogue among colossal-market-cap big tech. I wonder what will Apple rebrand to ? I think "Rounded corners" would be appropriate

shoto_io2• 5 years ago

Good one! It don't think it will ever happen though since Apple is an integrated company with no separate incorporated units, AFAIK. There is no need for a "mother" company like in Meta's or Alphabet's case.

xyst• 5 years ago

Basically name squatting off the popular use of "meta" to describe a self referential event/action.

Also FB lately has become synonymous with causing significant harm to democracy across multiple continents. A corporate name change is a cheap way to deceive people in the future. When they (future generations) try to lookup the history of "Meta", they won't immediately see the crap that FB produced in the dark ages.

It's the equivalent of a restaurant or business changing their DBA because of shitty online reviews. Or car dealerships advertising "new management"

jimkleiber7• 5 years ago

Basically name squatting off the popular use of "meta" to describe a self referential event/action.

Ironically, this cannibalizing of the word "meta" makes me feel even more strongly in favor of breaking up the company.

uptown• 5 years ago

Sure complicates the questions around what metadata they keep about a person.

heydenberk• 5 years ago

Some of the largest companies in the world are named after fruits, misspelled big numbers and rainforests, but even with that set of comparands, this seems a bit silly.

mrgleeco• 5 years ago

Wonder if gTLD is a thing here. If they already not on it, seems like a good (quarter million) squat.

jimkleiber7• 5 years ago

I wonder how this will help their case against antitrust. At first blush, it seems to me that this might hurt them more than help them. Announcing one's desire to move to a higher level, to transcend, gives me the impression they want to be even more of a monopoly, not less.

Or maybe it has the sense of "we don't care about your national laws, we will do as we please"—a bold challenge to nation-state regulation.

otterley• 5 years ago

On keyboards without a Meta chord key, Emacs and Readline users can hit Escape first instead. Sounds like a good plan to me. ;-)

sushsjsuauahab2• 5 years ago

While I wish them all the best, this name in my opinion only is a bit cringe.

Carmack and Abrash have been dreaming about the "metaverse" for 30 years now, but I would rather view computers as tools instead of viewing them as things that control our perception of existence.

cnst• 5 years ago

Not April 1 yet?

mycentstoo• 5 years ago

Metabook? Instameta? WhatsMeta?

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

Metazuck

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

Dystopian Ready Player One.

jamestimmins• 5 years ago

Fairly certain that's just Ready Player One

kaladin-jasnah• 5 years ago

It's not. In the story (the book), the company that runs the metaverse (Gregarious Systems) is portrayed as a "benevolent" company that somewhat respects its users and acts in the best interest of people (you may be thinking of the intentions of IOI and Nolan Sorrento, the adverserial company that sound like our Facebook).

Uh, there's also an unfounded claim in the story that the metaverse software (the OASIS) is open-source, but the author only mentions it once and this claim isn't exactly supported by the rest of the story (at least to me).

smilespray• 5 years ago

"Oh my God, it's full of ads!"

Belphemur• 5 years ago

Lots of PR Bullsh*t here:

Connection is evolving and so are we. The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. Our company’s vision is to help bring the metaverse to life, so we are changing our name to reflect our commitment to this future.

In other words, nothing will change, just the name.

lxe• 5 years ago

Just like that one time Netflix split into Qwikster... good times

Waterluvian• 5 years ago

So is this a Google -> Alphabet thing?

Or is "Facebook" being rebranded everywhere?

29athrowaway2• 5 years ago

Do humanity a favor and do not buy Oculus headsets.

Force them to remove Facebook login from headsets, and force them to open their VR platform to people using any headset.

If you don't, you may find yourself requiring an Oculus headset to work, do errands, etc. Just like Internet Explorer became the unavoidable plague of the 90s.

TillE• 5 years ago

I don't understand what Facebook is even doing in terms of a metaverse. Like they have the VR goggles, but what are they actually doing with it?

Coincidentally, MMO developer Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) has recently been detailing in a series of articles what his new company is doing in terms of building a metaverse, and it's pretty exciting in gaming terms.

https://www.playableworlds.com/news/riffs-by-raph:-online-wo...

isoskeles• 5 years ago

Maybe they'll try to make it so you can spend time with AI, VR avatars of your dead loved ones (like in Caprica, the prequel to the remake of Battlestar Galactica).

Kinrany4• 5 years ago

It doesn't sound any more open than then Facebookverse, so it'll just get bought out eventually.

MBCook• 5 years ago

They’re getting investor money. So far that seems to be it.

grantc• 5 years ago

Even if they're at 0% done in terms of what happens after you connect to a digital world via immersive conduits, $10B a year can put a dent in that burndown.

shostack• 5 years ago

If you haven't had the chance, I'd suggest watching the FB Connect keyboard. It couldn't really be more explicitly spelled out in terms of the long term vision and the road to get there.

fullshark3• 5 years ago

This was their previous attempt: https://youtu.be/PVf3m7e7OKU

Which I guess became Facebook Horizon https://socialmediahq.com/whatever-happened-to-the-hype-surr...

btbuildem• 5 years ago

If a metaverse is hosted by FB, it'll come with all the drama, nonsense and toxicity we see on there today. The product (ie, today's users of FB) is what stinks to high heavens.

elmomle• 5 years ago

It isn't the users, it's the platform and underlying philosophy of the business. They are factory-farming humans' attention; it's no wonder the result is dystopian.

md8z2• 5 years ago

I see this sentiment posted often on HN but I've seen no social media that didn't eventually become toxic or that didn't feed on human attention, this website included. What good is a platform if nobody pays attention to it? And if people are paying attention to it, how do you plan to prevent them from fighting, competing with each other over every little thing, and spreading misinformation?

TheOtherHobbes2• 5 years ago

It's basically The Matrix but without the cool martial arts moves.

I suppose the ultimate goal is compulsory participation, for more or less overt values of "compulsory."

threeseed4• 5 years ago

If a metaverse is hosted by FB, it'll come with all the drama, nonsense and toxicity we see on there today

It is ridiculous to imply that it's somehow unique or exclusive to Facebook.

It exists on all of the social media platforms, across the web and in the real world. It is more a byproduct of anonymous interaction than something Facebook is specifically doing.

txsoftwaredev4• 5 years ago

Don't blame the users. Blame the choices that Facebook has made. They WANT the toxicity, it keeps people's eyes on their phone.

jrgd• 5 years ago

Ridiculous Pointless Sad

Imnimo• 5 years ago

I don't think this strategy really worked for Ron Artest, but maybe it'll work for Facebook.

duderific• 5 years ago

He will be rebranding as "Facebook World Peace"

eatonphil• 5 years ago

Renaming but the domain stays the same? Clicking the logo on the top just takes you to about.facebook.com.

Ah, going to meta.com does take you to about.facebook.com.

They just aren't not-redirecting you yet.

znull• 5 years ago

All I can think of is Comcast -> Xfinity and how well that's gone...

eganist• 5 years ago

quasi-serious:

This spells the end of the expression "that's so meta" or any related quip about self-referential humor.

alex_young• 5 years ago

If they are actually rebranding wouldn't that be reflected on Facebook? I don't see it.

gregschlom• 5 years ago

This HN comment from last week nailed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28931821

bxparks• 5 years ago

Heh, I got uMatrix cranked up so high, all I get is the menu bar with "FACEBOOK", 3 screenfuls of complete blank, then "A future made by all of us". I feel strangely good about not seeing anything.

gamedna• 5 years ago

I wonder how much they paid for meta.com

modeless2• 5 years ago

Other interesting things said during the keynote: "and frankly, as we've heard your feedback more broadly, we're working on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account. We're starting to test support for work accounts soon, and we're working on making a broader shift here within the next year. I know this is a big deal for a lot of people. Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences and I get that, especially as the metaverse expands."

Also:

"As big of a company as we are, we've also learned what it is like to build for other platforms. And living under their rules has profoundly shaped my views on the tech industry. Most of all, I've come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things, and holding back the entire internet economy. [...] We'll continue supporting sideloading and linking to PCs so consumers and developers have choice rather than forcing them to use the Quest store to find apps or reach customers."

zzixp• 5 years ago

This is actually pretty big for me. I got a Rift a while back but it's been in a drawer ever since I needed to connect my FB account.

tobiasSoftware• 5 years ago

You actually don't need to connect it to FB for now as it's only the new systems such as Quest 2 that are forced to link it to FB. However, they have threatened to change that in a year or so even for the Quest 1 and Rift.

telesilla• 5 years ago

We just created a new account with a fake name. Happy so far with everything and we get to enjoy playing with no risk of info leaks.

twinge• 5 years ago

   We'll continue supporting sideloading and linking to PCs

I see this as a tacit approval of the thriving network of pirate games, something like the Adobe Photoshop model of proliferating and becoming the de facto platform.

Tepix5• 5 years ago

Sounds nice, doesn't it? However i believe they very recently starting requiring a validated dev account (i.e. with phone number) for devs to continue to sideload to their Oculus Quest, right?

spurgu2• 5 years ago

Which is somewhat fine since you can use an anonymous prepaid SIM card. Oh wait, the amount of countries where you can still get a prepaid SIM card without ID is diminishing, all in the name of "fighting terrorism". The internet is not going in a great direction.

warning26• 5 years ago

I assume this just means that they'll require a "Meta" account instead of a Facebook account, and it will come with all the same problems as creating a Facebook account.

Also, their "support" for sideloading, while better than nothing, requires a valid phone number or credit card number to sideload anything.

JohnFen4• 5 years ago

This. Whether it's linked with your other social media or not isn't the issue. And whether it's a "Facebook" account, "Meta" account, an "Oculus" account, or whatever, it's all still an account with Facebook and can be expected to have all of the baggage that comes with an account with Facebook.

jazzyjackson6• 5 years ago

Does facebook still have a real-name policy? interacting with people in the metaverse with my real name is the last thing I want (we all saw ready player one, no? does zuck understand the importance of anonymity?)

spurgu2• 5 years ago

From what I've understood they're especially been enforcing it for Oculus.

That said there are privacy controls. You interact with other Oculus users through a customizable username. And your Oculus activity can be set to be shown to "Only me" (or Oculus friends, or FB friends, or public).

But FB themselves are obviously still collecting all the data they can.

wolverine8765• 5 years ago

we're working on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account

How much work does that take?

I've come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things

A shot at competitors' app stores.

mbreese2• 5 years ago

How much work does that take?

Especially since the original Quest didn't require a Facebook account. It required a Quest account, but it didn't have to be explicitly linked to Facebook. (It's also one reason why I still use my original Quest and haven't gotten the updated model).

danShumway5• 5 years ago

we're working on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account

I mean... Quest had this ability before. And Facebook took it away. And now they want us to clap for them when they say they're kind of bringing it back, at some point in the future, in some kind of limited capacity for work accounts?

Call me skeptical.

I'm not really aware of any platform (including Quest) where I would say that Facebook is doing a good job of supporting consumer choice, and I've read plenty of leaked internal communications from the company that suggests they're internally pretty hostile to the idea (Mark included).

Maybe they've turned over a new leaf, but if Mark wants us to all give him the benefit of the doubt that a metaverse is going to be different, he could start by showing this commitment with... any of their current products, really.

There's a lot of talk here about how Facebook is going to be moving into the bold new world of user agency and privacy and choice, and not much acknowledgement that Facebook is responsible for making these platforms what they are today. I don't like Mark's subtle insinuation that Facebook is doing something new or bold by getting rid of restrictions on Oculus that he created. Especially when he hasn't actually fixed the problem, he's just vaguely assured people that the problem might get fixed a year from now, maybe.

He wants credit for swinging in a new direction, and he hasn't actually swung in that direction. Well, prove it, Mark. Prove it with your existing products before you start bragging about how good your next product will be.

Terretta• 5 years ago

""and frankly, as we've heard your feedback more broadly, we're working on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account. We're starting to test support for work accounts soon, and we're working on making a broader shift here within the next year."

Assuming not good or bad intent but meta intent would mean they're working on a meta account, so while you stop into a 'verse it's not your social, it can be whatever, but they'll link all your accounts in the meta umbrella.

NelsonMinar• 5 years ago

See also: Philip Morris rebranding itself Altria.

bingohbangoh• 5 years ago

Wow, did they pick the last four letter word that wasn't a startup name?

Agathos• 5 years ago

Whatever happened to Transmeta, anyway?

mikestew• 5 years ago

So will they be keeping the same domain names, or am I going to have to redo my Pi-Hole setup? I guess I'll add a wildcard entry for "meta.com" just to get ahead of things.

arduinomancer3• 5 years ago

The presentation talks a lot about the metaverse being built on open standards and protocols but it still seems extremely vague

Have they actually detailed this anywhere?

For example a most basic question: what 3D engine is this going to run on?

Is that engine open source?

What are the formats for assets/models/materials?

What blockchain is hosting the NFT assets?

babyshake3• 5 years ago

If Meta really does a good job of separating the open standards from their close products then this could actually be an exciting development, as unfashionable as it may be right now to be excited about anything Facebook is doing.

charcircuit9• 5 years ago

what 3D engine is this going to run on?
Is that engine open source?

That would be up to the implementers similar to how there are different browser engines.

stcredzero• 5 years ago

Well, shucks! Years ago, I had an unpublished iOS app named Meta! Oh well!

regularjack• 5 years ago

It wasn't enough for them to ruin the world, they had to ruin the word meta too.

hwers• 5 years ago

All this talk about the future is getting kinda boring at this point. I feel like it's been a good 7 years of talking about what will come in the near future and other than that near stagnation on most other fronts. (Autonomous cars, VR, etc.) I'll care when it's here I guess.

29athrowaway2• 5 years ago

In the metaverse, Facebook's crypto will become the legal tender. They may get away with rolling out Libra/Diem over there.

A VR world controlled by Facebook, with Diem as currency, that can only be accessed by Oculus... what can go wrong?

My kids will never use that crap I assure you.

brap5• 5 years ago

The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe.

It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never challenge him and only tell him what he likes to hear. He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

73737373736• 5 years ago

I wish he'd just present as his awkward true self, instead of this prerecorded, fake cringefest, something Musk doesn't shy away from

ritchiea2• 5 years ago

He’s certainly determined whatever his true self is, it’s not good for business.

EpicEng2• 5 years ago

Yeah but his "true self" isn't exactly something 99.99% of people enjoy. He's a robotic tool. Looks to me like he signed up for a "how to appear more human 101" course and now gesticulates with his hands non-stop.

spsful• 5 years ago

This is what I don't understand about their plan. Who on earth is planning to adopt this? We've seen a push from all sides of the tech industry to open up the AR/VR space, and it never took off.

Remember the Snapchat Spectacles? They still sell them but I don't think they were ever popular. Google glass? Popular, but discontinued. Apple's ARKit? Definitely much less adoption than their commercials would have led you to expect.

It seems like this is an experiment bound to fail, so good luck to the execs at f̶a̶c̶e̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ meta who have to clean this up in the end.

brap5• 5 years ago

Exactly, this whole things screams “we don’t know what people want”. The video looks like a very well made parody.

c0d4h• 5 years ago

I can't speak for VR, but AR definitively has a future.

You already see practical use of this technology with HUD-tech (Heads up display) in cars, but beyond that you'll find great applications for it within medicine/operations, transportation (directions), marketing (product information, authenticity verification), and the list goes on and on...

MikusR3• 5 years ago

Both Glass and Spectacles were sold only to the "chosen ones".

bink2• 5 years ago

Remember this AR Demo from Apple way back with the iPhone 8?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16272904/apple-arkit-demo...

And what commercial applications of this have we seen in the last 4 years?

jayd16• 5 years ago

Remember the Snapchat Spectacles? They still sell them but I don't think they were ever popular. Google glass? Popular, but discontinued. Apple's ARKit? Definitely much less adoption than their commercials would have led you to expect.

This is all pretty inaccurate. Glass wasn't even a VR/AR headset. The released Spectacles were just cameras. They're releasing a new Spectacles devkit that's actually an AR headset soon. Snap filters are still very popular and ARKit is also quite popular although it hasn't really hit a killer business case.

bredren3• 5 years ago

This seems like a video for investors, not users.

filoleg• 5 years ago

To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc.

Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end.

And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did.

koonsolo2• 5 years ago

I agree that Facebook and Zuch can't be that stupid.

But for me, I can't see this working. There is no VR game that really killed it. I also don't see which generation would actually be into this.

So it's not a "idiots!", but more of a "what am I missing here?".

Will be interesting to see this play out

brap5• 5 years ago

IG and WA were already wildly popular on a global scale when they were bought, though. People clearly wanted those. Is anyone on board with this “metaverse” thing outside of SV? To me this seems less like the IG and WA acquisitions, and more like the much hyped Facebook Phone and Facebook Home projects (RIP).

vmception• 5 years ago

Zuck and The Book have a lot of dumb, cringeworthy, failed initiatives that have nothing to do with those surprisingly high valued acquisitions a decade ago.

lovecg3• 5 years ago

Also reminds me of all the skepticism surrounding the iPhone launch. I remember those joke ad spoofs making fun of the actual phone feature. Yet here we are and who uses actual voice calls anymore?

wpietri17• 5 years ago

They were great acquisitions because Facebook failed to compete in those markets. Facebook continues to fail to compete in the youth market. I don't think failing to innovate and then buying your way out of the hole is a sign of particular acumen.

And they're still failing to innovate. Facebook now will be "retooling" toward "serving young adults the north star, rather than optimizing for older people." https://twitter.com/sarafischer/status/1452744573084708869

In practice what this means is that they have the same problem they did before, but antitrust scrutiny means they can't buy their way out of it this time.

noncoml• 5 years ago

the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened

Don't want to downplay it, but having access to all the info users give to FB is like insider-trading. They know very well what is trending, what is growing and what is going nowhere.

The main difference is that Metaverse is something the want to build from scratch, not something that already exists like Insta and WhatsApp, so they don't have that insider-trading info.

mrkramer5• 5 years ago

To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end.
And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did.

That's a fallacy. It doesn't matter if Zuck had 2 consecutive successful predictions because his 3rd can be unsuccessful. Each event(situation) is specific and different.

polote• 5 years ago

It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men

I feel like the opposite. Zuck is the only one to believe in the metaverse and as a result people who worked on the communication did it badly without a lot of conviction. He is in a pretty comfortable position, one of the richest people on earth doing 20% of growth every year. And still he wants to make a big risky bet like this one. I'm not really in favor of the metaverse but history has shown us that Zuck is pretty successful at things he wants to do

wpietri17• 5 years ago

What things would those be? As far as I know his successes are a) 1 idea he had as a 19-year-old plus b) some other things that he bought with the money from that.

moosey• 5 years ago

Zuckerberg no longer experiences risk except for in the most abstract of ways. Not in the way that the vast majority of people think about risk.

I would also suggest lack of conviction and lack of ability to complete the job look very similar, and you are likely to end up with the latter of you are surrounded by yes-men.

sounds• 5 years ago

The internal leadership at Facebook are all yes-men, from personal experience.

throwoutway• 5 years ago

Or that he just watched/read "Ready Player One" and was like "yes. that. now"

wpietri17• 5 years ago

There's a concept I find really useful: Acquired Situational Narcissism. If somebody spends enough time in an environment where everything is about them, they can easily come to believe everything is about them.

Another thing I think is at play is people confusing luck with genius. Zuckerberg is clearly smart, but Facebook was also a right-time, right-place thing. As FaceMash and Facebook showed, he understood his audience because he was his audience. But now, nearly 20 years later, Zuckerberg-the-billionaire has very little in common with the audience he needs if he is going to make the metaverse happen.

I mean, I too read and like Snow Crash, so I get the emotional appeal. But a middle-aged guy's favorite dystopian novel from 30 years ago may not be a useful blueprint today.

Permit• 5 years ago

I'm trying to word this kindly, but I think you should instead look at the concept of "Parasocial Relationships" if you think it's appropriate to diagnose Mark Zuckerberg with Acquired Situational Narcissism.

You do not know him, you have not met him and it does not make sense to try to diagnose a public figure based on what you've been presented by either his own press releases or media coverage of him. You and the person you have replied to have bought into the idea that no one at Facebook challenges him despite having not worked at Facebook or personally witnessing this.

mbreese2• 5 years ago

I mean, I too read and like Snow Crash

That's my take on it too. I don't really feel the metaverse in Snow Crash was something that I'd like to replicate. I mean, it's a cool idea, but that world is not one that I'd intentionally try to make.

Whether or not we are on our way that direction is another question entirely...

yurlungur• 5 years ago

Although I do feel the same I think given the world we are in today, I wouldn't necessarily bet big on its failure. That would probably make too much sense.

TameAntelope• 5 years ago

That "cringe" your feeling could be how people felt about the Internet in the 80s. Just keep that in mind.

brap5• 5 years ago

Maybe. But the internet grew organically, over decades. It was not shoved down our throats by a corporation telling us “this is cool, this is what everyone wants now, and this is the future”. I’m sure VR/AR will be big too, but it’s going to take a while, many technological breakthroughs, and it’s not going to look like that.

xtat• 5 years ago

So much this.

paganel• 5 years ago

Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men

That's what I think happens, yes. They should have learned something from the failure of Google+, after all they were directly involved in that, apparently they haven't.

dmix4• 5 years ago

The video also showed Zuckerberg really pixelated green-screen effect and low-framerate:

https://i.imgur.com/AGklzd2.png

Using a low quality virtual background might have been a poor choice when it's fundamental to the idea.

twofornone• 5 years ago

He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

From watching his mannerisms and facial expressions, I get the feeling that he is high functioning but very much on the autistic spectrum, and emulates many subtle movements/behaviors during communication that come naturally to "normies". That's why he comes off as a robot deep in the uncanny valley.

I like to think of it as partly emulating with software some of the communication hardware that neurotypical people have innately. Which is why social interactions can be taxing for those with Asperger's, the extra cycles are draining and distracting, in addition to the necessary self consciousness which also costs some amount of compute.

AndyMcConachie• 5 years ago

It would have been so much less cringe if they had just hired an actor that people liked to deliver the message. No one likes Mark Zuckerberg, so why is he the talking head. He's a terrible actor and presenter. They really needed to pay a famous person to do it.

wayfarer1291• 5 years ago

The whole presentation felt a lot like visions of the internet from companies like Microsoft (and others) in the mid-90s.. top-down, centralized.

anter• 5 years ago

Meta for Metastasis

codred• 5 years ago

Perfect!

AJRF• 5 years ago

I was watching the video and got to a bit where Mark said "So we are going to see what some metaverse experiences will be like" and then a pop up came over the video and said "Log In" and I clicked cancel because I didn't want to and the page reloaded itself and lost my place in the video.

stelcodes• 5 years ago

Yep, same. Speaks volumes!

IceWreck2• 5 years ago

Looks like Zuckyboi is a big fan of Ready Player One.

chowland• 5 years ago

no one cares

ativzzz• 5 years ago

While their mission of connecting people sounds nice on paper, they have shown over and over that they place profit first, which is not necessarily wrong for a corporation, but this incentives engagement over connection.

We've seen that as Facebook grew bigger and the engagement algorithms took over, that the worst of humanity is brought out. Despite there being genuine connection and overall improvement to people's lives happening on FB; if not people wouldn't be using it, but extremism, addiction and hate have become staples of the platform at large.

Frankly, I don't trust FB to fix these issues so I am immediately pessimistic about Meta, but the reality very well may be that us humans enjoy extremism content, don't mind digital addictions, and feed off hate and FB just brings out the raw truth in us.

Overall, I think FB needs a different business model other than advertising off engagement if they want to turn the page and appeal to the better parts of people.

sytelus5• 5 years ago

I have actually felt "connect the people" is very naive and cause of virtually all of their problems. It matters who are you connecting to whome. Are you connecting terrirists to other tterrirists? Are you connecting pedophiles to their potential victims? All connection tools are massive amplifiers for the adversaries and if they are left uncheck then disadvantage can overwhelm the advantage. I think their mission should be connecting the right people for the good purpose. The problem is these adjectives are hard to define except probably at the extremes.

danso2• 5 years ago

I was curious what meta.com looked like before FB took control of the domain. Recent snapshots aren't loading for me, but post-2015 it looks like it was taken over by an AI company — the page titles include "Meta — Science Discovered" [0] and "Meta — AI for Science".

Prior to that, since around 2012 it was an unused Wordpress site [1] that redirected to meta.compgu.com (which is now "tekman.cc", a consulting firm or something.

And its earliest owner (at least as captured by wayback) was a California events company "Meta Productions: Producers of Meet, Mix and Match. Promoting awareness through metamorphosis" [2]

edit: out of curiosity, I just noticed that one of the most famous domains that refused to sell out [3] — steam.com — is now apparently for sale?

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160110141037/http://meta.com/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150228180854/http://meta.compg...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20081002050002/http://www.meta.c...

https://web.archive.org/web/20100425061122/http://meta.com/

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20161023041828/http://steam.com/

minimaxir2• 5 years ago

Before now, https://meta.com redirected to https://www.meta.org/ which is owned by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; now, there's a banner saying it will be sunset next March.

modeless2• 5 years ago

There was an actual AR glasses company named Meta before this. They failed a few years ago. I guess Facebook must have bought the trademark from them. But they never owned meta.com I guess. Their current site is https://www.metavision.com/

renewiltord3• 5 years ago

Many of my friends from Meta (the AR guys) went to Oculus. Zuck acquired Meta.com (the AI guys) like half a decade ago.

jtsiskin2• 5 years ago

The trademark was only for “Meta” in this stylized font: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86907005&caseType=SERIAL_...

schleck82• 5 years ago

It's impressive how the logo on meta.com is not an SVG but a low resolution PNG

treelovinhippie• 5 years ago

Zuck's non-profit acquired the company back in 2017 and as of a few hours ago they conveniently killed it.

Imagine acquiring a company via your non-profit purely to grab the name and domain names for your for-profit.

Announcement: https://cziscience.medium.com/meta-transition-5f66b1fae475

jtsiskin2• 5 years ago

Meta owned meta.com, the m+infinity logo trademark (https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=5548122&caseSearchType=US...), the Meta trademark (https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86852664&caseSearchType=U...).

These trademarks covered: “promoting the goods and services of others via computer and communication networks using targeted and non-targeted methods; operating on-line marketplaces for sellers of goods and/or services … providing advertising space via the global computer network … creating on-line virtual communities … hosting electronic facilities for others for organizing and conducting meetings, events and interactive discussions via communication networks”

So pretty likely to conflict with Facebook.

However, they transferred all of these to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in May: https://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-tm-7299..., and as you mentioned, are now shutting down. It’s not a great look. I would feel pretty bad if I had devoted years of my life to building meta.org to now see how it was used

davidw• 5 years ago

If they really wanted to do something useful for the world, they could eliminate comments on local media outlet stories. The people there, as Obi-Wan Kenobi put it, are a "hive of scum and villainy".

theabsurdman• 5 years ago

"That awkward moment when Zuck takes your company's name: meta.inc" https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1453790072701001728?s=...

scaswqdqw2• 5 years ago

Hahaha! Opened the about page and Zuckerberg's face is right on the top :D This doesn't look like a good rebranding! Young people don't want Zuckerberg's social networks. They need something new.

kitd• 5 years ago

Meta or Facebook makes no difference. Nothing is going to change with this company until they are forced to publish their algorithms.

grae_QED• 5 years ago

The whole "Metaverse" thing reads like E. M. Forster's, The Machine Stops.

Now we'll never need to leave our houses. All thanks to Facebo... Uh, Meta.

desktopninja• 5 years ago

Job recruiters to prospect: Lets take a look at your meta data

busymom03• 5 years ago

Weird that meta.com doesn't redirect to fb.

It redirects to meta DOT org which is:

Meta, a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative project, is a biomedical research discovery tool that analyzes & connects millions of scientific outputs to give you a comprehensive view into science. You can easily explore research and follow developments by searching for specific terms or creating customizable feeds of papers and preprints.

EDIT: Fixed automatically now.

forgotpwd16• 5 years ago

Clean your DNS cache. It now redirects to https://about.facebook.com/meta.

busymom03• 5 years ago

Yep, just tried now and it fixed itself.

mempko2• 5 years ago

Meta and the metaverse looks like a huge attack on Apple. In a metaverse world, iPhones don't make any sense. Those that own the platform will make all the money. Apple owned a very lucrative App platform that would go away if FB is successful. I'm wondering how Apple will respond.

filmgirlcw• 5 years ago

I want off this ride.

_bramses• 5 years ago

MAANG just doesn't roll off the tongue as well

scaswqdqw2• 5 years ago

So, regular people have troubles trademarking very complex names and they give Zuckerberg trademarks for any commonly used word. What a great equality of treatment!

Communitivity• 5 years ago

Every FAANG (or MAAAN) company has invested into the Metaverse. Let's all remember they didn't invent it though, so I hope they don't gain complete control.

I'm all for it if it advances VR technology and they don't have full control. If the Oculus situation is any indication, Meta will be making a play for VR ad dominance, as will Google.

jhallenworld• 5 years ago

The new logo almost looks like the Space:1999 Meta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFf5uavxYGQ

cedricgle• 5 years ago

I guess no more project will dare to use meta in their name. They will fear either a copyright lawsuit or a fall in SEO.

danijelb• 5 years ago

This is as dumb as it would be to name your internet company Net in the early 90s.

Metaverse is supposed to be a generic term for an interoperable virtual 3D world. And now the term is linked to a specific company. I guess if there will ever be a metaverse, it won't be called that.

ChrisArchitect• 5 years ago

interesting the instagram page for facebook is gone, changed to https://www.instagram.com/wearemeta/

olingern• 5 years ago

This looks like an attempt to obfuscate the negative sentiments that we’ve come to associate with the conglomerate Facebook. I think there will be some short term success, but Meta and Facebook will become synonymous as Alphabet and Google are.

I’m also reminded that our mass media will play a major role in how public sentiment plays out. Like him or not, you have to admit the great lengths our media has covered Dave Chappelle over the past few weeks. You’d think things like this Facebook rebrand or the stalled infrastructure bill would have more meaningful coverage. Outrage, like sex, sells. I wonder if this rebrand will breach the outrage threshold?

racl1012• 5 years ago

Drop the 'ta'.

It's cleaner.

renewiltord3• 5 years ago

Wait what. They bought Meta VR like a couple of years ago. Some of my friends were there.

mrkramer5• 5 years ago

Metaverse in a sense of VR, AR? Just like Google wasn't the first search engine or Iphone the first smartphone someone else will dominate VR and AR someone else will make that big innovation and killer apps not Facebook. Facebook is big and old. Big Blue just like IBM.

yumraj• 5 years ago

I hope the pi-hole block list maintainers block the new domains soon.

blhack2• 5 years ago

I’m excited about it, and I thjnk it just means reality got a lot larger.

I don’t think Facebook will be able to control the metaverse as a closed platform, even if they wanted to.

jacktheturtle• 5 years ago

FAANG sounds better than MAANG though

easton• 5 years ago

It wasn't changed for Alphabet either. The future is MAAAN.

gsich• 5 years ago

Netflix has no place in this acronym.

aserdf• 5 years ago

i wonder, if one declines to participate in the "metaverse", will their shadow profile be randomly inserted, and vandalized/ridiculed by other versians?

sidenote - if i am understanding correctly, its conceptually similar to modus operandi from back in the 90s? just in VR?

petersonh• 5 years ago

LOL trying to watch the keynote but keep getting asked to login to Facebook and then since I don't have an account, I get the boot. I think that about sums it up.

jcomis• 5 years ago

the old comcast maneuver. if everyone hates you, change your name!

racl1012• 5 years ago

Ron Artest literally changed his name to 'Meta World Peace' cause his popularity sunk to an all time low after the Pistons and Pacers brawl.

haaserd• 5 years ago

Does this remind anyone else of that time that Comcast renamed themselves Xfiniti to distract from their terrible customer service, rather than fixing their horrible customer service?

blhack2• 5 years ago

Some of you guys seriously need to get out of your bubble. Facebook is an extremely popular service. Many, many people use it every single day, and love it.

This is not a rebrand to avoid regulations, or make people like it again or whatever. Facebook has been signaling this as the direction they wanted to go for quite a long time now.

popey• 5 years ago

I certainly get "use it every day", for sure. Clubs, celebrities, enthusiast groups.

"love it" though?

Feels to me that it's a necessary evil, like car insurance.

haolez• 5 years ago

The common word "metaverse" is now under attack and will be relentlessly copyrighted and protected :) maybe this was the strategy all along!

timwis• 5 years ago

Wait is this like Google inc rebranding as Alphabet and owning Google as its main product, or is the social media platform being renamed to Meta along with the company?

blsapologist422• 5 years ago

Like Alphabet

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

I hope they have no exclusive rights to the name. So many metaverse things already exist it would be a shame to see them being sued by FB

As for the rest, he's advertising a new Second Life / High Fidelity as if he invented it himself. Shameful not to mention that all this has been done before, the main difference being the VR glasses. And i m glad that this is going to fail because virtual worlds are the 100% opposite of facebook (pseudonymous, not real life, NOT real friends, create instead of consume etc)

hprotagonist• 5 years ago

The screens are blank at first, but finally the same image snaps into existence on all four of them at once. It is an image consisting of words; it says

IF THIS WERE A VIRUS YOU WOULD BE DEAD NOW

FORTUNATELY IT'S NOT

THE METAVERSE IS A DANGEROUS PLACE; HOW'S YOUR SECURITY?

CALL HIRO PROTAGONIST SECURITY ASSOCIATES FOR A FREE INITIAL CONSULTATION.

htrp• 5 years ago

"The concept [Meta] originates from Snow Crash, a dystopian novel from the 1990s in which people flee the crumbling real world to be fully immersed in a virtual one"

Facebook is creating a virtual world to allow us to escape the deteriorating state of this one.

timbit422• 5 years ago

Sounds like the matrix.

sureglymop• 5 years ago

Metaphysics is an old kind of philosophical "pondering" on ones own existence and reality.. ("why are we here?" etc). Also there is an art period called metaphysical art or metaphysical painting which was a movement in the early 1910s.

ngneer• 5 years ago

Grim. Much nicer to go outside and enjoy creation. Facebook and Meta are no doubt austere in comparison. To quote Vonnegut, it is you who should be doing the becoming, not the damn fool computer.

Nekorosu• 5 years ago

I somehow feel culturally appropriated.

jstx1• 5 years ago

Since the linked page didn't really tell me anything, I had to go their twitter for a summary:

Announcing @Meta — the Facebook company’s new name. Meta is helping to build the metaverse, a place where we’ll play and connect in 3D. Welcome to the next chapter of social connection.
The names of the apps that we build—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp—will remain the same.

gotostatement• 5 years ago

the picture for "responsible innovation" is so funny... they're like "we're approved by this disapproving black woman!"

DethNinja• 5 years ago

Any of the FAANG workers here please tell me why all the large companies are trying to create metaverse?

I’ve been playing MUDs, MMOs since their very beginnings and literally metaverse doesn’t interest me. So who is their target audience that they can spend billions on this metaverse?

And how metaverse will be different than Second Life?

Give us some insider knowledge please.

basisword• 5 years ago

> I’ve been playing MUDs, MMOs since their very beginnings

You’re old :) I don’t fully get it either. I don’t understand why kids want to watch concerts in Fortnite and spend loads of money on in game items that only impact aesthetics but it seems clear there’s lots of opportunity there. The interest in NFT’s, crypto etc among younger people is massive too. Lots of opportunity. What isn’t clear is exactly what “the metaverse” will look like. There are a lot of buzzwords being thrown around in big tech companies rather than concrete long term ideas but I think it’ll figure itself out with time and different ideas take shape and come together.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

Why were they trying to make self driving cars or AI or VR games some time ago? Their real product is their stock value

thesquib2• 5 years ago

Na fa la na ma na ma ba pa to wo ha...

lunch• 5 years ago

Welp, tried atleast 7 times to watch this without a Facebook account. Made it about 2 minutes each time before being redirected to a login page.

mrkramer5• 5 years ago

Welcome to Metaverse where we have virtual sex! Enjoy your stay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGMa1Q-45ow

astlouis443• 5 years ago

Sorry Zuckerberg, but the metaverse will NOT be a walled garden, tied to a social media company. Is the the internet, and more specifically, THE WEB itself as an immersive, distributed spatial ecosystem of worlds.

The metaverse needs to be interoperable above all else, and this is unachievable with the equivalent of native, vendor locked apps controlled by an entity. The web already does this, as every site is governed by standards like HTML and HTTP which are consistent everywhere, on every device.

WebGPU, WebXR, WebAssembly, and WebTransport are the key foundational technologies to this future online space. Our startup Wonder is assembling tools to empower developers and non-technical creators alike to build and deploy immersive websites using native game engines like Unreal Engine, that allow for immersive virtual storefronts, hangout spaces for chatting with friends and family, collaboration with coworkers, or jump into a game or interactive experience like a concert.

Why the web, you might ask? Because no owns it. There's no 30% cut to give Apple or Facebook for accessing it.

If you're interested in learning more or registering your intent ahead of our general availability launch, you can join our Discord here:

https://discord.gg/zUSZ3T8

throw10920• 5 years ago

the metaverse will NOT be a walled garden, tied to a social media company
links to a Discord server

micromacrofoot7• 5 years ago

the metaverse will NOT be a walled garden, tied to a social media company
If you're interested in learning more or registering your intent ahead of our general availability launch, you can join our Discord here

This is award-worthy satire

tracyhenry• 5 years ago

WebGPU, WebXR, WebAssembly, and WebTransport are the key foundational technologies to this future online space.

This sounds like a narrow view focusing on software. Hardware is apparently the bottleneck here. A 3D game on a website is at best semi-immersive. You need headsets/AR glasses to get full immersion.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

You needed a full screen to experience a website.

But then phones came

The metaverse is an idea. Immersion is in the brain. Theater was the first metaverse.

sillysaurusx• 5 years ago

I know most of us aren't looking forward to a future with Facebook in control, but ask yourself: How many times has Zuckerberg been wrong about tech trends?

I can't think of a single time. He's gotten every major investment correct.

This metaverse idea will either be the first major Facebook misstep, or it's a future we should embrace sooner than later. You stand to win big if you're an early adopter on any given platform, and perhaps it's time to start thinking about this as a new iOS.

That said, I hope I'm mistaken.

rchaud7• 5 years ago

Zuck getting acquisitions of already popular products right is not the same as creating popular products from scratch.

yuuu• 5 years ago

I think you're 100% right. I'll be laughing at all of the criticism in this thread ten years from now.

busymom03• 5 years ago

I tried to watch the keynote video 3 times and after a few seconds, it would show me a login popup. I haven't had a FB account for over 7 years. Why can't they just let me watch what they are without an account?

alvis• 5 years ago

Meta? Does it matter?

jliptzin• 5 years ago

Why can't they just say we want to change the company name to distance ourselves from the increasingly toxic brand that is Facebook. Yet another dishonest, cringe, and nauseating announcement from Facebook.

oedmarap• 5 years ago

I imagine when the branding is complete we'll get the following gem:

  <meta property="og:title" content="Meta">
  <meta property="og:site_name" content="Meta">
  <meta property="og:url" content="https://meta.com">

Joking aside, in my view the branding (and branding ability) of the name change to Meta is impressive given their long term vision.

However, I do get the feeling that Meta will aim to eventually become a household proprietary name and thereby water-down what can be considered one of the broadest, most abstract terms we're all familiar with.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

there are already multiple companies named meta

Axsuul• 5 years ago

and basketball players

frakt0x90• 5 years ago

This person called it a week ago which I just think is impressive

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28931821

wayeq2• 5 years ago

Facebook finally caved to their rapidly aging demographic's clamoring for a VR metaverse

bredren3• 5 years ago

Couple quick things: Zuck's speaking has improved an incredible amount. So, props there.

Zuck's said a few variations of "building blocks are there" or "it is coming together" but also, "Even though it is still a long way off..."

This projection / demo video of the metaverse seems like a distraction to me. If FB doesn't have this to deliver, it is a lot like the old microsoft product concept videos. [1]

What is the intent? To see Zuck as a visionary? Does his speaking deeply on this subject attempt to position him / Meta as an authority?

Unless Facebook / Meta is setting expectations way lower than where they're about to deliver, I don't see how this will be viewed as anything other than a temporary salve to fill the vacuum sucking oxygen out of Facebook.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-tFdreZB94

baby2• 5 years ago

I mean, you gotta make people excited about the future, and I think they were successful in doing that here. They want to be an innovative company, as opposed to just a social network company, that's the pitch.

bredren3• 5 years ago

Then I would have not spent so much time showing off silly games that don’t exist / are not even planned, like the hydro foil thing.

They could have talked about how they do innovative tech research across the spectrum.

For example, they can reasonably take credit for react as a major open source contribution. Why not describe plans for doing the same in helping people build for the metaverse.

It felt way too surface level to me.

wayeq2• 5 years ago

So they finally caved to their rapidly aging demographic's call for a VR enabled metaverse.

ElonMuskrat• 5 years ago

Their new logo looks like a sagging pair of tits.

jschulenklopper• 5 years ago

“Meta” is a four-letter word.

Or less ambiguous, “meta” is a word of four letters.

throw7• 5 years ago

Can't watch without logging into facebook. That's all you need to know.

rektide2• 5 years ago

I want to present another way of looking at this, & identifying it as a brilliant move. This is just one lens, not representative of what I really believe, but I think it's an important lens to pick up & assess by.

Facebook makes a ton of cash, and wants to be a place where sharp, bright, talented engineers want to come work. But the family of apps are all semi-done products; they're late industrial creations, heavily refined, and there's just not a lot of open possibility space to do good things with them.

Meta is a break. It's a way to create new grounds, explore new ideas. Whether the ideas are good or bad almost doesn't matter, compared to re-creating a company with some real will, drive, & possibility in front of it. Unchaining yourself from the town-planner stage of maturity that you've been whiling away at for almost a decade & creating permissions to try interesting things, to make new space where you're not always stepping on legacy concerns: I almost can't imagine not doing this.

And Meta has a fairly catchy, nebulous set of ideas behind it. It's difficult to imagine how Facebook/Meta can really make anywhere near as much impact, make a clear win here. But I'm at a loss to think of other bits of terrain that are both not-yet-settled/won, and simultaneously as compelling & interesting to a potential employee-base. If I ran a hugely successful company that had more-or-less established itself & wasn't in existential peril & falling position, I'd be asking myself the same question: what would be fun for us to do? What would keep my us well engaged & might possibly yield some epic shit? Meta is a not bad answer.

renewiltord3• 5 years ago

This is fucking awesome. I am super bullish on the metaverse. Besides, you don't bet against the Zuck.

imwm• 5 years ago

meta.com – used to be a Chan-Zuckerberg initiative to discover scientific papers. Now it's Facebook's corporate home. Hmm.

aorth• 5 years ago

I can't even watch the keynote without logging in. I don't have a Facebook account... ummmmm.

zitterbewegung• 5 years ago

This sounds like googles strategy to dominate social networking with Wave…

silentsea90• 5 years ago

I dislike FB, but I think it is very cool that Zuck has the guts to radically change the company's identity around a vision that may be arbitrarily far (see: Oculus/Magic Leap's promise vs progress). Most big companies are petrified to make changes that kill the dying golden goose.

_yoqn2• 5 years ago

Hopefully this does irreversible damage to Facebook and they have to sell off chunks of their monopoly to survive.

bellyfullofbac2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure how the structure is, if Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus are separate companies owned by the holding company also named "Facebook".

I'm pretty sure the websites/apps will keep their names, just a design will change, e.g. if you load Instagram, the splash screen says currently "Instagram, from Facebook", and it'll be "... from Meta" soon enough.

schleck82• 5 years ago

The entire Wikipedia article is already updated haha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta,_Inc.

m3kw9• 5 years ago

There is still a huge massive gap in what peoples think a metaverse is like(think Ready Player One, or any move with VR involved) vs what it is in reality.

Facebook will still be Facebook for quite a while.

Mikho• 5 years ago

Meta worse.

ebanana• 5 years ago

meta feta betta? i guess if google can be alphabet, facebook can be meta. i was always under the assumption from everything i have read about business and branding that from a marketing standpoint renaming your brand once established is a fairly bad idea but i guess that has changed?

_yoqn2• 5 years ago

This is highly frightening.

Run.

Don't let your kids get sucked into this. If they are already, rescue them. If your parents have been captured by Zuck and his minions, get them out. Go outside and look at a tree. Reality is fine as it is.

adamqureshi• 5 years ago

I wonder who they paid to come with that one. Now they'll further push into making humans slave to the machine. More ads, More AI. More human mining. More content pollution. It's just a big ass ad factory. Its very easy to control sentiment using content bots / farms and convince people to drink the koolaid under the false pretense of bringing them together when in reality all they want todo is serve you more ads and sell your views to the marketing companies who target you everywhere. 2-cent.

Dowwie• 5 years ago

Often, Hacker News sentiment winds up terribly wrong. With that in consideration, Metaverse will probably be huge and is worth considering.

Is it going to be a walled garden? To what extent will it be open?

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

Facebook has a history of keeping their platform very open. Their first facebook platform was too open by today's standards (though normal-open by that day's standards). He said so in the video, and i m fairly sure he will keep it as open as possible and try to make open standards.

philk10• 5 years ago

oh, you wanted the metadata and not the Meta data says Zuck on his next congressional grilling

Dumblydorr• 5 years ago

Can anyone here convince me AR/VR isn't a fad? If FB is headed towards a metaverse where our insane uncles can embed themselves further in a false reality, how is it that the rest of us sane individuals want to join their conspiratorial matrix?

Even taking out the crazy uncles, VR makes me insanely nauseous. What's more, it's very expensive to get solid VR that doesn't, nevermind it still looks terrible even if you have a high powered rig.

I could see solid VR occurring in the distant future, but it has so many ethical and technological downsides currently. I view it mainly as a fad to inflate stock prices, a fun toy for tech enthusiasts, but not a serious game changer.

molsongolden• 5 years ago

More fluid collaborative remote work environments.

I haven't kept up with or tried any of the AR/VR products but I could see huge usage if someone can nail the remote work VR experience.

Assume there will be reasonably priced hardware with good performance when thinking about the space. This bit is inevitable if the demand exists.

jazzyjackson6• 5 years ago

It’s an accessibility lawsuit waiting to happen, as a large portion of the general population gets motion sickness wearing goggles.

AI audio descriptors may come in handy, but really I’m more concerned with excluding people based on cost of hardware and access to high speed internet.

(I’m designing a metaverse platform which supports multiple interaction modes so as not to exclude people, AMA)

MikusR3• 5 years ago

Quest 2 is 300$ and completely standalone

zemo• 5 years ago

Can anyone here convince me [position]

generally no, because this framing starts the conversation from a standpoint that you have a position, and it's the other person's responsibility to change your position, instead of your own responsibility.

What's more, it's very expensive to get solid VR that doesn't, nevermind it still looks terrible even if you have a high powered rig.

have you used a Quest

oehpr• 5 years ago

Some VR looks pretty good, I think The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners looks great!

But of course, good proper unjank VR seemingly requires a 5x GPU power increase. You need 90+ FPS, two screens, high rez, and responsive. It's a pretty hard ask, so games need to take a big step down in quality in the name of performance. Even worse, a persons situational awareness and scale take a big leap up when compared to a flat screen, you notice flaws way easier.

Personally I was pretty lucky, VR doesn't seem to make me sick. And I use it frequently for lunch break exercise, I get to play games and get some physical activity in, which is a big win for a desk jockey. On that reason alone I don't think VR is going away. That's amazingly valuable.

psyc• 5 years ago

VR the implementation is prone to false starts. I still don’t know whether this current wave will stick.

But VR the concept is universal and inevitable. The idea of feeding artificial input to the biological senses, in order to place our consciousness elsewhere, is a genie that can’t be put back in the bottle. No way does humanity leave that option on the table once it’s technologically feasible.

marknutter• 5 years ago

Why would anyone want to be totally immersed in a realistic virtual world? It boggles the mind.

sytelus5• 5 years ago

AR/VR are just one of the surfaces. I think it will be sort of "Second Life" on industrial scale. It would be available in all places. Most people will probably end up using in 2D. Now we can expect people to spend their free time on raising virtual pets, do virtual farming, go "outdoors" in artificial scenary and being preyed on by weirdos in those worlds. It is like a drug and could be a big business.

jgalt212• 5 years ago

I just want to repurpose all of Yakov Smirnoff's jokes about Russia for the metaverse.

powerset• 5 years ago

Glad to hear they're at least claiming their contribution to the metaverse will be built on open standards and protocols, I hope they follow through on that. Pretty sure nobody would want a walled meta-garden.

neom2• 5 years ago

I keep a pretty sharp eye on the apple job postings to see what type of people they're hiring. I think they've been working on something similar since about 2014. Around then I noticed they posted for, then hire a lot of optical engineers, (I'd look to find the hire on linkedin a while after the posting was gone) but people with odd skills for apple, contact lenses mostly, lasers, and then a bunch of people who had done PhDs around putting gas/liquid between plastic that can react with projected light.

aristofun• 5 years ago

This is the beginning of the end. Read this comment in 10 years please.

3pt14159• 5 years ago

Fun story, I once tried to convince a new friend of mine that his startup that I'd landed a small consulting gig with should focus on how it could make the world better, not just go after profits, because I could clearly see that what they had was just so useful and adaptable and that pharmaceutical companies would easily want to scoop them up.

Back then they were in the midst of rebranding, but they ultimately changed their domain to meta.com and were acquired by the Chan Zuck initiative. I was happy. It seemed like one of the most pro-social uses of their software.

It's kinda funny to see Facebook rebrand to what was a fledgling startup out of Toronto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(academic_company)

sjg007• 5 years ago

The Chan-zuckerberg foundation has a scientific paper search engine called Meta as well.

tdonia• 5 years ago

visiting a friend at a facebook office a few years ago, we walked by a small room near the bar cordoned off with caution tape. "oh, they're replacing the TV again, people keep using the oculus and smashing it by accident, has happened a few times" -- i can't help but picture that small, broken room today. #meta

zalequin• 5 years ago

Fuck Uckerberg and anything that is related to thus human waste

parenthesis2• 5 years ago

It makes a lot more sense for Facebook to change the name of the parent company — given the actual and potential proportion of their revenues from Instagram and WhatsApp — than it did for Google to change to Alphabet given that Alphabet is still mostly Google in terms of making money.

However, the timing makes it look like a ploy to distract from current controversies (although I don't think it is a ploy), and the name Meta is going to look really stupid if their whole Metaverse thing doesn't work out.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

I just saw some ads about Meta. They are beyond cringey. Facebook and Zuckerberg are out of touch.

ppjim• 5 years ago

Someone predicted 10 years ago in HN that this would happen.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2561810

pronlover723• 5 years ago

Facebook is the worst place to have a metaverse. The metaverse to me is where you get your freak on. Just look at VRChat or Second Life, it's full of people in highly sexualized outfits doing sexual things. I don't want Facebook (or any company) associating my sexual persona with a real name account.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

yeah people don't get it. virtual life is called virtual for a reason. Who would want a copy of real life with plastic 3d avatars. If people are really into this , i have a pair of sunglasses to sell you for $4000. It's like the real world, slightly tinted

twalla• 5 years ago

It's almost like Zuck saw all the ads in Ready Player One and read about all negative shit in Snow Crash and went "yes, I'd like that"

73737373736• 5 years ago

If it's gonna be an ad-based business model, we might end up here, HYPER-REALITY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

freediver• 5 years ago

Does anyone actually enjoy the VR/AR experiences in a profound way?

malloreon• 5 years ago

I wonder if facebook employees really think they paper over the harm they do each day by renaming their company.

if you call it something else does it still hurt people?

blunte• 5 years ago

How long until they begin to sue any other company with "meta" in its name (even pre-existing ones)? It will happen.

buitreVirtual2• 5 years ago

The timing of this announcement is strange. Maybe this was already planned for late October, or maybe this is an attempt to take control of the narrative after all the horrible publicity.

Graffur• 5 years ago

I do think VR will be part of our futures but I won't use Facebook as part of it.

When I was watching the keynote - about 10 mins in - I got redirected to login to Facebook. That is not cool.

hardwaregeek• 5 years ago

I want to read the William Gibson book that inspired this reality

_alexander_• 5 years ago

Facebook lates to the party - meta.ua

cranesnakecode3• 5 years ago

This is going to be the Futurama metaverse where you have to fight ads everywhere to go.

4oo4• 5 years ago

I'm going to keep calling them Facebook out of spite, since this doesn't distract me in the slightest for how toxic the company continues to be.

Instead of Metaverse, I'm going to call it Virtual Hell™.

donretag• 5 years ago

How long until I get a "Come join Meta!" recruiting email?

rexreed• 5 years ago

Can someone PLEASE tell me why the metaverse will succeed when things like Second Life and oh so many other immersive realities have failed. Is it because of the VR? Honestly why is this a thing?

jazzyjackson6• 5 years ago

Fax Machine conundrum I suppose, only useful once everyone else is on it.

I don’t see it taking off tho, if Facebook.com can’t get a 2D text interface to load faster than multiple seconds what hope is there for an immersive world working on anything but the best fiber connections?

citizenkeen• 5 years ago

I am not looking forward to all the people who get C&Ds for using the words 'meta' or 'metaverse'.

jazzyjackson6• 5 years ago

boooo

Snetry• 5 years ago

I'm not exactly fond of Facebook but I think this could go in the right direction of improving their image

cranesnakecode3• 5 years ago

The metaverse isn't for us who've already spend 30+ years in tech and realize what tech-obsession steals from you.

It's for the kids who grow up addicted to it and don't realize until their 30s that they've had depresonalization disorders their entire lives.

This will succeed with them.

16bytes• 5 years ago

I don't understand what exactly this rename/rebrand entails.

Is it restructuring FB like Google became Alphabet? So, under the "Meta" umbrella, you have all of the individual FB assets, and www.facebook.com just becomes one of those assets?

Some outlets are reporting that, yes, it's something like this:

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/28/1049813246/facebook-new-name-...

This landing page, however, does a terrible job of explaining this. There's this "news" page:

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/facebook-company-is-now-me...

But even that is similarly lacking in details. Looking at this page you'd think Oculus is now Meta for how much they emphasize VR/AR and literally nothing about FB and the other apps.

What weird, mixed messaging.

MengerSponge• 5 years ago

Meta is as anodyne as Altria.

at_a_remove• 5 years ago

Hrm, so FAANG becomes MAANG. Add in Microsoft and Uber, MANGA MU. "Yeah, I have been shopping my resume around to the other MANGA MUs."

rcpt• 5 years ago

Can't wait to talk to all you guys in VR

iblaine• 5 years ago

Reminds me of MySpace renaming itself to My_____.

corysama• 5 years ago

Related: "Facebook's metaverse spending will top $10 billion this year"

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/facebook-metaverse-10-bil...

pseudobry• 5 years ago

Looks like the future of the Internet as imagined by Vernor Vinge's book "Rainbows End" (set in 2025, written in 2006) just got a lot closer.

smuemd• 5 years ago

Not to happy with this. The name of my daughter (8yo) is Meta. :-/

karaterobot• 5 years ago

This is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor of not using Meta. In retrospect, a lot of people wish they'd done this with Facebook, but of course it's too late now. Don't make any mistakes you know you'll regret.

wolverine8765• 5 years ago

Meta-comment: Corporate press releases are poor OPs; it is only the facts and spin they want to present, rather than good journalism which covers more facts, other analysis, multiple points of view.

It's similar to the reason that Wikipedia doesn't allow primary sources (last I knew), only secondary ones. The primary source has a strong bias and can say anything.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

there isnt a lot to write about as people have not seen it yet. Generic pontification about the metaverse is as old as the internet.

wolverine8765• 5 years ago

I mean coverage of the announcement; there is plenty of that.

hacknews20• 5 years ago

Read my comment about this before: the only (best) way to fix this company is to go private and have as part of that a new executive team.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453963

legohead• 5 years ago

Everyone keeps saying metaverse, but meta makes me think of metadata, which is about the worst name they could have chosen.

"Are you worried about FB storing all your data? Okay, lets rename to a word that is about scooping up all relevant data."

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

Meta (TM): All your data are belong to us. That's why it's called metadata

pelasaco2• 5 years ago

That's so woke, weird and awkward. Zuckerberg, trying to be natural, the interviewer, the parties.. I hope that isn't our future

dmix4• 5 years ago

Even the robot character was awkward.

pelasaco2• 5 years ago

almost as awkward as Zuckerberg nodding in the interview and saying how much fun he had playing some games.

blurbleblurble• 5 years ago

they want to mediate all interaction, so they can tax and steer relationships

solarkraft• 5 years ago

I for one am excited for the Metaverse and all the Second Life jokes we will make about it.

nanomonkey• 5 years ago

Damn, I love the term "meta", and generally enjoy meta concepts (metamodernism, metacognition, metaverse, metamorphosis, etc.). This taints the term terribly.

bellyfullofbac2• 5 years ago

It's also so fucking unoriginal... "hmm we need a parent company that owns all the other companies, what should we call it?"

I'm not sure how the structure is, if Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus are separate companies owned by the holding company also named "Facebook".

Obviously the websites/apps will keep their names, just a design will change, e.g. if you load Instagram, the splash screen says currently "Instagram, from Facebook", and it'll be "... from Meta" soon enough.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

Keep using it. Meta is a commonly used term in sciences etc. Facebook can go change itself to something more distinct, don't let them control language

kerng• 5 years ago

Is it just me, or is that logo a little unappealing and distorted?

samat• 5 years ago

FAANG → MANGA

fairity• 5 years ago

I get that it's popular to shit on Facebook and its CEO, but a lot of you seem to be dismissing the metaverse vision out of hand.

It seems obvious to me that humans will eventually spend a significant amount of time in VR. The question is not if but when.

As tech advances, eventually, VR environments will feel close to identical to IRL environments. And, when that happens, there is no reason to bear the commute costs of travelling to IRL environments.

rchaud7• 5 years ago

Yeah and AI will be big too one day, but that doesn’t mean IBM Watson's going to corner the market.

dmix4• 5 years ago

The longer FB video made me wish I was on Youtube. They don't even do sharing basic content well yet.

gorgonian• 5 years ago

I see they already bought the meta.com domain. I wonder who owned it before and how much it cost Facebook to acquire.

alanlammiman2• 5 years ago

Gosh, you'd think that after CAMBRIdge AnalyticA, and to a lesser degree liBRA, CAMBRIA isn't the best name for the new headset...

ashton314• 5 years ago

Dang it. How am I supposed to tell people that when I talk about "meta-programming" I'm talking about Lisp and macros and cools stuff like that, and not that I'm programming for some shady-as-sin company?

breakpointalpha• 5 years ago

Anyone else find it hilariously dark that this page says:

"The metaverse will be social" and when you click "Watch the Keynote" it takes you to a login screen for Facebook?

riffic• 5 years ago

this is the Alphabet thing all over again.

doesn't change anything.

hmate9• 5 years ago

Metadata would have been a better name

encryptluks2• 5 years ago

Good luck ever having them remove the data you share.

haar• 5 years ago

Click to watch the keynote... "You must log in to continue."

liminal• 5 years ago

Facebook is working on brain-computer interfaces... because we completely trust them to have that level of access to our minds.

rl32• 5 years ago

October 28th, 2021 4:44PM EDT

Following a new keynote from augmented reality company Meta on Thursday, scientists continue to investigate how Epic Games' MetaHuman technology has become categorically superior to real-life actors in terms of expressed humanistic qualities, seemingly overnight.

Responding to questions surrounding the unfortunate name clash, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney denied this would cement his position as a present day Eldon Tyrell: "We never said that. 'More human than human' isn't our motto and never was; today it just happens to be true. The technology is still in its early stages, and it clearly isn't there yet."

When asked for further clarification, Sweeney elaborated with candor: "It's eerie, you know? From the outset, we knew their strategy was to bring the one-dimensional qualities of stock photo models to life, we just didn't think they'd succeed this early."

"It's really made us question our product strategy as a whole." said Sweeney. "We're trying to make fake humans realistic, and they're trying to make real humans fake. What's their end game? It's kind of a mind fuck, honestly."

When reached for comment Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed for this article, electing instead to maintain an unblinking gaze as his arms continued to awkwardly gesture with sterile insincerity.

vehemenz• 5 years ago

Great. Now when I discuss metaphysics and metaethics, I have to subconsciously suppress the visage of history's most mediocre gazillionaire.

Cyberthal• 5 years ago

You have a tremendously valuable brand.

You change it to a nerdy adjective.

georgewsinger• 5 years ago

Not part of the metaverse: https://simulavr.com

Program_Install• 5 years ago

This is just some dystopian sounding shit, innit? Meta(verse, data, etc.), humans have just sold themselves out.

omot• 5 years ago

I'm suddenly teleported back to 2006 when people didn't take Facebook seriously at all.

spoonjim• 5 years ago

Should have called it “Verse.”

Mockapapella• 5 years ago

I would just like to throw my hat into the ring and say that I'm super excited for the metaverse and can't wait to experience it

nerdwaller• 5 years ago

I picture Facebook owning the metaverse close to the alternative outcome to Ready Player One, if IOI ended up owning the Oasis.

If you’ve not read it, it’s an enjoyable read. Definitely skip the movie, however.

sergiotapia• 5 years ago

Logo looks like a ballsack.

https://i.imgur.com/iucCEuc.png

gonehome• 5 years ago

You can watch the connect talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKPNJ8sOU_M&t=867s

It'll be interesting to watch this space and it's cool that someone is working on building this out - I hope they leverage some of the staying power of the web by leaning on protocols for a true platform, but that'll be hard to do.

There's a ton of interesting potential if lightweight AR hardware works out. I think it'll be pretty interesting.

Grakel2• 5 years ago

God, look at the comments. "I can't wait to (describes VR gaming.)" The misunderstanding of technology across the population is so profound it's dumbfounding.

annadane• 5 years ago

Who wants to bet Zuckerberg is the ONLY one within the company that wants this and other employees are rolling their eyes?

anonu• 5 years ago

I was trying to understand when the metaverse concept started coming into more "popular" discussion.

Here's an interesting thread from June 10: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27723460

simonh• 5 years ago

Presumably Sharkleap was taken.

Suck always struck me as slightly disconnected from real life, but this is him floating off into fantasy land, and not just metaphorically. If you think the Metaverse is the next big thing, I’ve got an NFT of some valuable real estate in Second Life I’d like to sell you.

Traster• 5 years ago

I really hope this transparent dodge to avoid regulators doesn't work out. The first time Zuck says "Oh, don't subpoena me, subpoena this human shield" Congress needs to turn around and say no.

mikl• 5 years ago

Thanks to Facebook, the word meta will soon sound like a curse. Words like “metadata” will start sounding very sinister.

Anything else you can do to ruin our day, Meta?

butterfi• 5 years ago

Hilariously, when you follow the above link, the site doesn't honor the back button. Figures.

swayvil• 5 years ago

When your reputation gets really bad, change your name. I guess that works well enough to make it worth doing.

I recall several scummy companies doing that over the recent decades.

dvaun• 5 years ago

I was building plans for a site called th.emeta.net on the domain emeta.net, which I own. With this announcement I may have to rethink that now...crud

Cadwhisker• 5 years ago

Finally, someone found a way to get everybody off "Facebook".

d--b• 5 years ago

In all seriousness, this looks like an Hooli ad from the Silicon Valley TV show. I can really picture Mark Zuckerberg as a real life Gavin Belson surrounded by minions telling him all day long how great this Meta thing is.

danShumway5• 5 years ago

The core idea of having a universal layer on top of reality that is owned by any company, at all, is utterly repulsive to me. I'm not sure I have the words to describe it.

The type of world Facebook is describing is always -- 100% of the time -- a dystopia if it is a privatized, corporate-controlled AR/VR layer where ordinary people need permission and contracts to interact with each-other. Anything any single company or coordinated group of FAANG companies make will be awful when scaled up to the level Mark is talking about. There's no promise they can make to me, there's no strategy they can pursue to ease my worries. Purely by virtue of a single company (or a group of FAANG companies) being in charge of it, it's already garbage.

Having said that, of all of the companies to try and assert control over a "metaverse", Facebook is probably amongst the least suited and most dangerous companies to do so. If they can't even run the Oculus platform competently, how can they possibly claim they're competent enough to run a giant industry-wide platform on top of Oculus?

----

The metaverse will be a collective project that goes beyond a single company. It will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone.

And this stuff is just complete nonsense. No platform that Facebook has ever been involved with has ever even remotely come close to being "collective" or "open" to everyone worldwide, and it's just wildly insulting to pretend that anything about that is going to change now.

Facebook can't even launch this announcement article without making a bunch of XHR requests and falling over if Javascript isn't enabled. So sure, let's all close our eyes and pretend that they're magically capable of building an accessible, open VR platform that respects user privacy/agency. What has Facebook ever done in its entire history as a company that would make us believe that they are in any way trustworthy or qualified enough to try and build a consumer platform/medium of this scale?

hbn3• 5 years ago

The metaverse will be a collective project that goes beyond a single company. It will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone.

I'm pretty sure this literally just means "it'll have apps"

So it's "created by people all over the world, and open to everyone" in the same way iOS is. Sounds like a great replacement for reality

fillipvt2• 5 years ago

Would Meta be able to build a federated Metaverse? If they are, things are different.

jay_kyburz• 5 years ago

The thing I don't understand about the Metaverse is, if it was going to be any good, we would have it now with mouse, keyboard, and a nice big 4k monitor. _What you do_ in the metaverse doesn't really have anything to do with goggles you strap on your face. The goggles are just supposed to improve the immersion.

If Facebook wants to make this work they need to get into the business of making multiplayer games for everyday people. They need a huge catalog of virtual experiences with as much variety and content as Netflix's catalog.

I have no doubt that for $15 a month a huge amount of people would switch over from watching TV in the evening to hanging out in virtual worlds doing interesting stuff.

Then once everybody is playing these games on their playstation, xbox, or pc, they can upsell them on a VR rig.

Uhhrrr• 5 years ago

Maybe they can just buy Roblox.

neop1x• 5 years ago

"virtual experiences" sounds a lot like Roblox. Unless they acquire Roblox I can't imagine them doing "virtual experiences". So far they failed with anything other than selling ads. Messenger is so bad, that even the notification sound can't be changed. Marketplace is so bad that filtering barely works, seller reviews almost nonexistent, alerts working randomly. Facebook post reporting is terrible, they helps escalate conflicts, spread disinformation. Whatsapp and Instagram are just their "assets" they hold without innovations. I wish they never acquired Oculus. I hate Facebook so much! They are like an insect, making people lives worse and sucking blood while doing so.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

We have it already since 20 years ago. Second life was the most talked about, at some point companies and governments were setting up virtual offices there. But it s become niche , and the company behind it is brain dead. I don't know why facebook pretends it invented this stuff. VR glasses are nice and new, but don't make such a huge difference as people think. In fact they are very constrained in terms of what you can do in world

RegW• 5 years ago

Good god. Has Facebook now got such a bad rep it has to change its name?

For me it will always be the fat man standing behind a lamp post.

guerrilla• 5 years ago

Metastatic.

chrisvalleybay• 5 years ago

You know what? This is lame. The whole presentation. The communication. The products. The way the story is being told by someone that's clearly way out of touch. For the first time it feels like they can be challenged. And not just Facebook; Apple as well. Google too. This is lame. Out of touch. Innovation might not be stagnating technically, but they sure are stagnating socially. It will be interesting to see what actually comes next. This certainly isn't it.

cblconfederate16• 5 years ago

Yeah i got that feeling that this was way too fake to be genuine. Either they were doing that demo just to distract people from their other criticism, or they are actually becoming obsolete.

nikolay• 5 years ago

From Fecesbook to Metacrap!

tornato7• 5 years ago

Growing up, the older generation just didn't "get" new technology, often embarrassing themselves by not knowing how to use a computer.

I always thought I would "get" technology. But with a lot of this new metaverse stuff, I truly don't "get it" while I think younger generations will. Some day maybe I'll make a fool of myself by not knowing how to call my son in VR using an NFT identity.

bernardv• 5 years ago

There is a significant likelihood that this metaverse concept will flop. To stake the company’s namesake on it is unwise. It really seems like this is combination of committee think + a knee jerk reaction to its recent public spanking.

etempleton• 5 years ago

I would be concerned, but I don’t really know if Facebook, umm, erm, Meta has the follow through to actually make this a reality.

How many times have they had Mark Zuckerberg come out talk about some future product or idea that never came to fruition?

Remember the faked home automation personal assistant video that Mark did a few years ago and how that was the future?

This is what this company does. They unveil an idea and faked tech demo before they even know if they can execute upon it in a meaningful way and then never talk about it again, because it ends up they can’t do what they promised.

Now I am sure they will do something here since they have the VR tech, but I just don’t believe they are going to create anything more than second life in VR.

da39a3ee• 5 years ago

What are the plans for preventing people from simulating sexual encounters with virtual likenesses of real people?

It seems that in order to prevent that, we need some sort of security technology preventing me from being able to create computer programs / VR plugins that can simulate that visual experience. If so, does that mean that we're going to need some sort of fingerprinting technology that can determine whether a VR humanoid is a likeness of a real human?

Or is the plan "ban sexual content in VR worlds"?

anyonecancode• 5 years ago

I assume this is short for "metastatic"?

Ok, acknowledged throwaway line. To try and save this and at least make this at least slightly more substantial -- I'm skeptical of VR becoming seriously mainstream, in the near term or perhaps ever. I'd say I hope FB goes all in and ends up burning up all their money, except I could see it being a profitable niche, giving them money to continue negatively impacting the mainstream non-metaverse online world.

musicale2• 5 years ago

dup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29033358

but I'll add my dup comment for good measure:

META: Make Everything Terrible Again

musicale2• 5 years ago

Wrong thread, and I can't seem to edit parent post for some reason; however I will add...

It's a synthesis of the core features of social media:

Misinformation, Enragement, Tracking & Advertisements

or perhaps a more truthful mission statement for tech companies:

Make Everyone Technologically Addicted

SavantIdiot• 5 years ago

Odd defenses of FB/Zuck in this thread. Criticism of Zuckerberg isn't sour-grapes, its pointing out that a ubiquitous product that made a handful of people fabulously wealthy has been proven to be both destructive to society and helpful for finding friends, and the balance isn't clear which is better.

diveanon• 5 years ago

I cannot think of a worse group of people to be spearheading this effort.

Are Facebook execs really this tone deaf?

bprasanna• 5 years ago

For a common man like me it feels like: too much bad publicity change the identity!

SquibblesRedux• 5 years ago

This whole situation reminds me of the movie Videodrome [1]. Without a moral compass, and with immersive AR/VR, I shudder to think were we will be in 5-10 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome

porknubbins• 5 years ago

If there is going to be a metaverse, aesthetically I’d like it to be designed by SNES era RPG designers, whose made up places always felt somehow very real and human sized. Silicon valley nowadays is a “mind of metal and wheels”, an absolute vacuum of any artistic taste in everything from their offices to their products (except maybe Apple under Jobs and Ive).

palencharizard• 5 years ago

Guess we all need to start saying MAANG now

eutropia• 5 years ago

from faang to Manga?

interstice• 5 years ago

With the metaverse -- I don't really see how that would work (if it's envisioned Ready Player 1 style). Either you have one game engine everything has to be in (limited), or like a lobby system to launch games which is basically just VR Chat with a launcher (not seamless), or youre constantly launching and quitting game engines (messy, hard to make seamless). Am I missing the mark here?

dev_tty01• 5 years ago

Mark the date. Facebook has now had their "jump the shark" moment.

codr7• 5 years ago

Phew, all they were really missing was a good name.

TechZillennial• 5 years ago

150 million on AR/VR... I get the feeling this is gonna flop. Hard.

omgitsabird• 5 years ago

I think Facebook (Meta) is swinging at a target that doesn't exist here. This is pie in the sky futurism. Sure, it is easier to build than flying cars, but it is nearly as fanciful.

I doubt they will suffer from the venture. However, I believe that the name change will result in a long-lasting sting to remind them of their failures.

multifasciatus• 5 years ago

Has anyone done the studies on eye health with long durations of AR/VR ala Oculus usage?

fbrncci• 5 years ago

FAANG becomes MAANG.

DeathArrow2• 5 years ago

Why not rename The Facebook to The Matrix?

mro_name3• 5 years ago

I couldn't care less. Oh – will have to change my blocklists for some new domains?

Any hints to a list somewhere?

sytelus5• 5 years ago

My worry is that they are not thinking about how many ways this can go wrong. There are already iPhone apps that allows you to put on avatar and meet people in a 3D virtual world. According to DoJ these apps are haven for pedophiles. Nothing good happens in these apps. People with severe mental issues show up, try to hit up others and eventually end up destructing real lives. Initially, everything looks safe because it's all virtual, anonymous and no body is touching you but that sense of safety goes away very fast as you meet wierdos and divulge more and more information. Some of these apps have rules like no nudity but people finds out various ways to be provocative even more than if they were nude. As things are "virtual" everybody wants to push towards extremes of everything. These apps are places worse than Medusa's head.

apexalpha• 5 years ago

According to DoJ these apps are haven for pedophiles. Nothing good happens in these apps.

People said the same about the internet itself, then social media, then tinder, then tiktok.

Honestly, people and government just put "haven for pedo's" on everything they don't like.

dragonwriter2• 5 years ago

people and government

So, just “people”?

sytelus5• 5 years ago

Internet has good things and bad things but on these apps there is nothing good happens. I can imagine may be VR will be used to celebrate gradma's 90th birthday by her entire family virtually. But from what I can see, these will be about 1% to 2% of use cases. I don't think designers would intentionally encourage it but if you make meth legal, how many would actually use it for medical reasons?

DeathArrow2• 5 years ago

There are countless discussions on HN and elsewhere about the "evils" of Facebook, Google or corporation X. But people who talk about these "evils" are in minority.

The general public finds the products of Google, Facebook and corporation X as being convenient, not evil.

There are many alternative social networks, search engines, chat apps, operating systems which for some reason don't have so much success. If they don't start being more convenient and more tempting to the public, we are still stuck with the products of "evil" corporations.

The governments of the world won't do anything to change the situation so the situation will only change if alternative products become more desirable by the public.

locusm• 5 years ago

Mark thinks hes James Halliday

mikewarot• 5 years ago

Facebook also broke the URL I use to read my feed in reverse chronological order today, so I've warned everyone I might go away.

It used to be companyurl/?sk=h_chr, which now just gives a message that something is wrong.

a_ba• 5 years ago

Never mind the metaverse. Given that facebook (meta) is in the business of selling your meta-data to the highest bidder, the name appears to be spot-on.

megamix• 5 years ago

So what's changed?

tipiirai• 5 years ago

Mark's vision is a polished version of what is actually going to happen, which is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

mmarq• 5 years ago

https://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is-murder/

optimalsolver• 5 years ago

This kind of thing works.

Very few people today know that Chiquita used to be the infamous United Fruit Company.

arendtio• 5 years ago

A future made by all of us

You can't even watch the keynote without a Facebook account...

varispeed2• 5 years ago

That sounds pretty ominous though. When you see many governments legislating to make it very difficult for people to create their own jobs, almost like forcing them to work for someone else, it may be that only jobs in the future will be at Facebook, Google, Tesla or Amazon.

varispeed2• 5 years ago

If you gold wrap a turd, it's still a turd.

kieckerjan• 5 years ago

Wonder what Stepenson thinks of this.

Note to self: if you ever write a scifi-novel, trademark the names of all flashy technologies imagined in it so that some Evil Corp does not claim them to brush up their coolness factor.

joshxyz• 5 years ago

Aint this no different from google's alphabet?

pvelagal• 5 years ago

Meta’s goal seems to become a “3D-Internet” browser/platform. But unless the concept of a “3D-Internet” is widely adopted and the related standards/technologies are built/adopted by the major players it might be gargantuan task for one company to pull this off. IMHO the Vision is great and inevitable.. but needs Industry support.

jonashendel• 5 years ago

now its maang companies, not faang

amelius• 5 years ago

So the Meta key on my keyboard is now a Facebook key, sort of?

c7DJTLrn• 5 years ago

Facebook, Meta, whatever it's called, I won't touch it with a ten foot pole. I'm a major VR enthusiast and a developer but I dumped my Rift as Facebook's tentacles took hold of Oculus.

I can't say I want them to fail because VR is exciting, but I do hope other companies can catch up and do R&D of their own.

Mindwipe2• 5 years ago

The rebrand doesn't really matter.

What was interesting was the idea of a Meta account and that splitting out the various Facebook properties because enforcing one set of terms across all of them has become impossible. That's quite the about turn and has a lot of implications.

Unfortunately, it was also an almost detail free announcement, and felt like the company had only come to this conclusion a few days ago.

ehnto• 5 years ago

It's wild seeing the CEO of a company on the forefront of technology end up pitching a customizable 3D world for VR. It took me way back to when I was a teen playing with "3D desktop" apps for Windows. It also feels weird because I feel like he's messing around in what has so far been a hobbyist arena, where there is zero money to be made and people do it just for fun. VR play spaces get released all the time by nobodies for free. It was like watching Elon Musk try and pitch the idea of a model plane, like yeah Elon we have those already, don't you make spaceships?

Anyway, I am just being snarky. I get that this idea is much bigger than the Horizon Home demo. I guess I shouldn't be dismissive, since objectively, they also made one of the biggest most impactful companies in the world out of a PHP blog site.

raindropm• 5 years ago

So it begins...the first few minutes of any dystopian movie. Glorious future of humanity introduce by "visionary" billionaire.

We knows what this will lead to....

Also, goodbye to all the little fragment of free "me" time people still have(if they still have any left) Without alone time to reflect on self, how can one grow, how can one think about something deeply?

The future is grim, unlike what Mark and his investors said while hoarding even more fortune.

tunnuz• 5 years ago

Ready Player One anyone?

nix23• 5 years ago

Oh look Zucki makes the keynote on his home-planet, pretty cool...i like that new openness:

https://about.facebook.com/meta/

metta2uall• 5 years ago

Where are we going to get the additional electricity to power these virtual worlds in the short term? We're already in a climate emergency due to insufficient green energy to power existing demands...

mackross• 5 years ago

Zuck watched ready player one and was inspired by the villain.

lindwhi• 5 years ago

I'm looking forward to its evolution; I hope they can execute this metaverse world perfectly. Does the only problem lie in how the mass consumers will react to the metaverse?

timmers• 5 years ago

that's not it yet.

sdfhbdf• 5 years ago

Will FAANG become MAANG?

subpixel• 5 years ago

I sense that working on that video was a low point in the producers' and editors' careers. Everything about it was flat, so that in spite of all the special effects I found myself thinking about Mark's uncomfortable chemical peel.

lost-found• 5 years ago

Suicidebook, I mean Facebook rebranding to Meta. Talk about lipstick on a pig.

seanw444• 5 years ago

Zucc tries to make this technology a product. I don't think the successful iteration of a "Metaverse" will be any one company's product, but rather a community-standardized protocol.

jeisc• 5 years ago

Facebook Renames to Meta

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