Aiming at a future facing the metaverse, the company appears to be trying to preempt criticism with conscientious investments and partnerships.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in June that the social media giant is on its way to becoming "a metaverse company." Now the company is putting its money where it is, unveiling plans to spend $50 million over the next two years to help bring the metaverse to life.
Today, Facebook announced the XR Programs and Research Fund, a two-year initiative to fund its own projects and external research as the company explores the future of online social interactions. It's a "starting point" for Facebook, according to the announcement, as it tries to co-create the future. metaverse online.
What is the metaverse? It's a term we hear often in the cryptography industry, especially when decentralized projects try to create future online worlds and experiences free from the oversight and control of centralized entities – like Facebook, for example.
Essentially, the metaverse refers to shared online spaces in which users – represented by 3D avatars – coexist and interact with each other. It has been represented in media such as “Snow Crash” and “Ready Player One,” and Ethereum-based metaverse worlds such as Decentraland (shown above) and CryptoVoxels already exist. The next game Sandbox is another prominent example.
In addition to opening the door to new social and gaming experiences, metaverse advocates believe it will also help change the nature of work and provide new digital economic opportunities for users around the world. In a sense, it is similar to how DAOs, or autonomous decentralized organizations, are being built to disrupt traditional businesses.
It's intoxicating and potentially revolutionary – which is why some metaverse builders fret at the prospect of Facebook trying to lead the development of the metaverse. Apparently aware of the criticisms of its user privacy record and the cultivation of misinformation, Facebook said today that it will build metaverse products “responsibly” through this initiative.
“We will work with experts in government, industry and academia to think about issues and opportunities in the metaverse,” says the official post. “For example, its success depends on building robust interoperability between services so that the experiences of different companies can work together. We also need to involve the human rights and civil rights communities from the beginning to ensure these technologies are built in an inclusive and enabling way. ”
Facebook's initial partners in the $50 million initiative include the Organization of American States, Women in Immersive Tech and the African organizations Electric South, Africa No Filter and Imisi3D. The company will also consult researchers at Seoul National University, the University of Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore about these efforts.
However, as these first efforts take shape, Facebook has already signaled that it does not intend to create or supervise the eventual metaverse alone. And that will likely be just the beginning of a long-term process.
“The metaverse is not a single product that a company can build on its own,” the company writes. “Like the internet, the metaverse exists whether Facebook is there or not. And it won't be built overnight. Many of these products will not be fully realized for the next 10-15 years. ”