TECHNOLOGY – The boss of the social network Mark Zuckerberg has announced the name change of the company in reference to the metaverse, a kind of digital parallel world.
LCI editorial staff –
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Facebook is dead, long live Meta! In the midst of turmoil, the group with the blue logo is reinventing itself. Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, announced Thursday that the parent company will now be called Meta, to better represent all of its activities. The founder of the tech giant, accused of putting profits before humans by a whistleblower and many elected officials, chose Meta – “beyond“in ancient Greek – to show that there is “always more to build.” Added to this is a new blue logo in the shape of a horizontal “8”, resembling the infinity symbol in mathematics.
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Facebook is dead, long live Meta
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This announcement was made after an hour and a half of presentation of the “metaverse”, “métavers” in French for meta-universe. But what is it exactly? A lining of the real world in which we could exist in the form of avatars. To set up this new means of communication, it was necessary to bring together different technologies. The objective is simple: to live an experience in a virtual reality by engaging the body as much as possible. Thanks in particular to virtual and augmented reality, it should make it possible to increase human interactions, freeing them from physical constraints, via the Internet.
The feeling of really being with people
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It could, for example, offer the possibility of dancing in a nightclub with people located thousands of kilometers away, but also to buy or sell digital goods or services, many of which are yet to be invented. “The essential quality of the metaverse will be the presence – the feeling of really being there with people”, explained Mark Zuckerberg in July on his Facebook profile.
Where does this name come from ? Online media Huffington Post explains that it comes from a 90s dystopian novel called The Virtual Samurai, written by Neal Stephenson. In the book, users of a metaverse had their minds trapped in a computer virus that impacted the brain.
With this complete world of virtual reality, officials advocate openness. They also repeat that Facebook does not seek with the “metaverse” to build a new closed universe, like its social network. “No company will own or operate the metaverse”, they say. “Like the Internet, its main feature will be its openness and interoperability. To bring it to life, collaboration and cooperation will be needed between businesses, developers, creators and policy makers.”, they say.
In order to prepare users, Facebook already offers a series of connected objects. Last September, Ray-Ban and Zuckerberg’s company launched a pair of connected glasses. This device can take photos and videos.
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While it places it at the heart of its strategy, the “metaverse” represents much more than entertainment for Facebook. Ultimately, it can be integrated into different parts of our life, such as tomorrow’s teleworking. The “metaverse” could therefore upset many of our habits, but also our social or romantic relationships. The American giant, which in September appointed a specialist in “metaverse” to the post of technological director, is not the only one to bet on this virtual world.
Epic Games, publisher of the Fortnite video game, has indicated that part of the billion dollars raised this year from institutional investors, including Sony, would be devoted to the “metaverse”. On Decentraland, an online platform considered as one of the precursors of the “metaverse”, it is now possible to get a job as a dealer in a virtual casino. Will 2022 be the year of the “metaverse”?
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