Meta, the new Facebook universe
Zuckerberg
changes the name of his business conglomerate and focuses on 'ruling' that
great virtual world
The appearance of covid-19 caused a digitization of the economy and the daily lives of millions of people. The return to normality has made teleworking, among other things, take a back seat. However, Zuckerberg does not want to pass up the opportunity to 'rule' a large virtual world, known as a metaverse. A concept born in 1992, where users can enter, improve, create or transform shared spaces. For this, Oculus, a virtual reality company, is the key. Horizon Home is the first big test of the other world of Facebook. This will be the great room where people can meet their friends.
The new world of Zuckerberg will allow to open a
conversation in current applications and 'travel' to the metaverse. Home will
be the place from which to jump to that new place. This virtual path will be
through Messenger in virtual reality, where you can make calls with Facebook
friends. Once the call is started on a mobile phone or on the computer, it will
be possible to continue in virtual reality and "talk between
realities".
THE
SCANDALS:
• Use without permission of user data. In 2018 an
investigation by 'The NewYork Times', 'The Observer' and 'The Guardian'
uncovered that the British firm Cambridge Analytica had collected personal
information from 87 million Facebook accounts without their permission to
benefit Trump in the elections of 2016. In 2017, the Spanish Data Protection
Agency fined the company 1.2 million euros for violating the regulations.
• Recurring security failures. A cyber attack in 2018
exposed the data of 50 million users. In December, another security breach left
the photos of 6.8 million people unprotected. Some problems that have also
affected WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, and that in 2018 allowed hackers to
access all the information of those who used the application's video calling
service.
• Harmful content that is not removed. An ex-worker has just
released documents that confirm that the company does not remove harmful
content despite knowing of its existence.
The original vision raised by Facebook was of an infinite office and to take advantage of all the news that digitization has brought with the new normal. Oculus wants to create an ecosystem of 'apps' in virtual reality. To do this, you will expand the types of applications and create a virtual world, especially a collaborative one. Thus, among the plans of the new Facebook, it happens because applications from other developers such as Dropbox, Slack, Instagram and many more can be executed.
Another of the most anticipated news was the new name of Facebook: Meta. "Right now, our brand is so closely tied to a product that it can't possibly represent everything we're doing today, much less in the future," Zuckerberg explained. A facelift in the worst business moment of the conglomerate and that many companies have already carried out in the past. This October 28 marks a before and after in the life of the company, although with nuances. Facebook changes its name, but only its parent. The social network, for now, continues to be called the same.
Virtual
experiment
At the beginning of the third millennium, just with the fears of the 2000 effect, Second Life was already looming as a virtual experiment. This parallel reality allowed its users to navigate an imaginary world and interact with other users online, through an avatar. An ephemeral success that, to this day and almost forgotten, still generates 60 million dollars a year. Now companies like Epic Games, the owner of the video game 'Fortnite', or Sony have put 1,000 million dollars on the table to give a push to the metaverse.