IT Blog

CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared recently that he wants Facebook to become a metaverse company. But there’s a problem with that: This “metaverse,” as Facebook defines it, doesn’t really exist yet, and probably won’t for years. As with premature talk from past augmented reality and virtual reality companies, talking about such a faraway technology too early may hinder Facebook’s long-term effort to bring the metaverse to the mainstream.

In some ways, this evolution seems like a natural challenge for a social media giant to tackle, especially one that happens to own a major VR product (Oculus) through which people can experience digital spaces. Facebook began talking specifically about meetings in shared digital spaces at its F8 developer conference in May 2018.  Then Facebook began teasing its future augmented reality glasses, another key portal into digital spaces. This summer Zuckerberg seemed to widen the company’s vision when he began referring to the “metaverse,”…