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Facebook Renames to Meta
- amelius 5y agoSo the Meta key on my keyboard is now a Facebook key, sort of?
- pvelagal 5y agoMeta’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.
- shoto_io 5y agoLet’s have a “Meta” discussion about this rebrand.
- cblconfederate 5y agorebranding 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_io 5y agoGood 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.
- Communitivity 5y agoEvery 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 5y agoThe new logo almost looks like the Space:1999 Meta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFf5uavxYGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFf5uavxYGQ
- danijelb 5y agoThis 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.
- hprotagonist 5y agoThe 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 5y 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.
- sureglymop 5y agoMetaphysics 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.
- timbit42 5y agoSounds like the matrix.
- knowsuchagency 5y agoA name to signify what facebook has METAstasized into
- czottmann 5y agoStill a terrible, terrible organisation that's detrimental to societies and humankind as such.
- goatlover 5y agoIs it FB or social media and big tech in general? I'm confused by the laser focus on FB all of a sudden.
- distrill 5y agoI don't think it's particularly sudden, although I am also confused by the laser focus.
- goatlover 5y agoBefore a few weeks ago, it was all social media and big tech that was getting a bad rap for ruining society, but now it's almost exclusively FB.
- goatlover 5y agoI forgot to add ruining the "fabric" of society, as the media and politicians love to say about whatever X is doing that. I have no idea what the "fabric" of society is supposed to be. But I'm pretty sure it was already "ruined" by tv, rock & roll and video games.
- jeromegv 5y agoFB being the biggest and the one most likely to shape our society, they deserve the spotlight.
- viro 5y agoOr congress could do its job and not expect a private company to regulate "truth".
- 5y ago
- jstx1 5y agoSince 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.
- philk10 5y agooh, you wanted the metadata and not the Meta data says Zuck on his next congressional grilling
- dmix 5y agoThe longer FB video made me wish I was on Youtube. They don't even do sharing basic content well yet.
- ashton314 5y agoDang 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 5y agoAnyone 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?
- nerdwaller 5y agoI 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.
- dev_tty01 5y agoMark the date. Facebook has now had their "jump the shark" moment.
- lindwhi 5y agoI'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 5y agothat's not it yet.
- sdfhbdf 5y agoWill FAANG become MAANG?
- subpixel 5y agoI 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 5y agoSuicidebook, I mean Facebook rebranding to Meta. Talk about lipstick on a pig.
- seanw444 5y agoZucc 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 5y agoon instagram; © 2021 Instagram from Meta
- minimaxir 5y agoThe 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.
- nerbert 5y agoColombo invented the "one more thing". Give credit where credit is due ;)
- aliswe 5y agowho?
- firecall 5y agoJohn Columbo, former CEO of IBM.
- mro_name 5y agooh, not the TV detective :-(
- RobKohr 5y agoFret not, it was really the TV detective. I think the one that suggested it was someone from IBM was being sarcastic. One more thing for your viewing pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxBnaMGP2aY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxBnaMGP2aY ~ A fellow Columbo fan who used to watch it with his Grandma (she so had the hots for him)
- dredmorbius 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbo
- agumonkey 5y ago
- quartz 5y agohttps://meta.com 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 5y agoThe keynote video redirecting to a Facebook login screen is hilarious.
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoWhy? The keynote video is on Facebook, that's why it would be redirecting you to a login screen.
- quartz 5y agoI guess at least partially because part of the rebrand was supposed to be that you won't need a facebook account anymore to do meta things so gating the video is a little off-brand now.
- jobigoud 5y agoYou don't need a facebook account to access many pages on their website, like public groups. The video could've been public.
- dstick 5y agoSomeone got to add "Advanced JS" to their resume!
- dang 5y agoPlease don't do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- distrill 5y agoIt's definitely intentional
- djbusby 5y agoHoly crap! I drunkenly guessed that lame-ass name. Somebody just got $1 richer!
- nescioquid 5y agoIn case you're still drunk, what will the new acronym be? MAANG? MAGNA? AANGM?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- djbusby 5y agoI'm hoping for some other rebrand and it can become MEGAMAN
- notacoward 5y agoIf Google hadn't become Alphabet, we could have had MANGA.
- babyshake 5y agoRemove Netflix and we've got MAGA.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mabub24 5y agoSo, cut through the brand/marketing-speak and this is just like Alphabet, right?
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoWhat an odd move; how on earth do they expect to defend that trademark?
- djbusby 5y agoLawyers, guns and money.
- arduinomancer 5y agoOn 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoThis 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 5y agoThere 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...
- speedgoose 5y agoCongratulations for your rebranding! Now, can you respect us?
- dbish 5y agoMANGA sounds more fun then FAANG so that’s nice
- astlouis44 5y agoThey 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.
- rvz 5y agoIt 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840&p=2 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266796
- not2b 5y agoAnd 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.
- jimkleiber 5y agoExactly, 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 5y agowat.
- rvz 5y agoyes. and you are going to watch them do it on 'the metaverse'.
- seanalltogether 5y agoSo is this like Google -> Alphabet where it's mostly a behind-the-scenes type thing?
- rvz 5y agoyes. 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 5y agoReading about this company just drains my energy and enthusiasm right away. Can't put my finger on why.
- Havoc 5y 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 5y agoYou 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.
- jazzyjackson 5y agooh my god monsters inc was an allegory for social media, profit via harvesting fear, laughter, empathy and anger
- r-r-r 5y agoNicely translates to "(shes's) dead" in Hebrew...
- sushsjsuauahab 5y agoI believe the original Facebook name in Chinese (Mandarin) sounded something like "have to die" as well haha
- yunusabd 5y agoYou're right, "Fei Si Bu Ke" in Chinese, "非死不可", which literally means "have to die".
- azth 5y agoSimilar in Arabic (maita).
- nyt-maps 5y agoMy 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.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIs 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?
- bigdict 5y agoOr maybe they have nothing else in the portfolio to bet on?
- 0x4d464d48 5y agoSounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me. Anyone know if people there are heavily influenced by his work?
- Kinrany 5y ago> Sounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me. How so? Searching for "metaverse" on LW yields 9 results, most of them are irrelevant.
- 0x4d464d48 5y agoI'm thinking more about how this seems like a template for people to integrate their personal lives into an actual simulation and give a justification for a 'friendly AI' to determine what's best for us. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3823vuarnmL5Pqin/quantum-non-realism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3823vuarnmL5Pqin/quantum-no... https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition
- 5y ago
- Ansil849 5y agoIn 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.
- gitfan86 5y agoAt 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
- CodeGlitch 5y agoTakeaways in the UK also do this after the Foods Standards Agency shuts them down.
- edgriebel 5y agoSame 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 5y agoThis 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.
- chestertn 5y agoIt is so dumb it might work.
- tomalpha 5y agoIs 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 5y agoI 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".
- kingkawn 5y agoThis 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.
- specialp 5y agoThe 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-meta/ https://sociable.co/science/aaron-swartz-chan-zuckerberg-met...
- avsbst 5y agoThey 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 5y agoLooks like it's still up? https://www.meta.org/ https://www.meta.org/
- avsbst 5y ago11:45ish they will put a banner up saying it's going to be shutdown end of May next year Unfortunately archive.org is capturing the SVG logo from the site not the actual site so I can't prove the current state of the website but you can look at the last valid capture from 10/22: https://web.archive.org/web/20211022094334/https://www.meta.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211022094334/https://www.meta....
- avsbst 5y agoRight on cue: "Meta.org will sunset March 31, 2022: Meta will be supported through March 31, 2022. In the lead up, we will work with you in transitioning to alternative open services. Read more."
- losvedir 5y agoI 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.
- mempko 5y agoGoogle 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.
- IceWreck 5y 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.
- vineyardmike 5y 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.
- rchaud 5y agoSounds like they don't have the capability to deal with bad actors.
- vineyardmike 5y agoWe know this from the congressional hearings - its hardly insightful. Very few can handle bad actors at the scale they have to. But no they were clearly not ready. Not sure what tech company really showed success at this sort of scale. Twitter could barely stay above their toxic sludge of content, Youtube is even more full of misinformation, reddit is not free of controversial decisions - hell, even good ol' SMS and phone is a heap of robocalls and spam.
- daviding 5y agoIf 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.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoThere'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.
- CerealFounder 5y agoDont worry. Unless they acquire it, they aint building it.
- gscott 5y agoWelcome to Ready Player One
- AlexandrB 5y agoExcept it's run by Nolan Sorrento from day one.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoSo true.
- trentnix 5y 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.
- Belphemur 5y agoLots 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.
- xyst 5y agoBasically 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"
- jimkleiber 5y 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 5y agoSure complicates the questions around what metadata they keep about a person.
- heydenberk 5y agoSome 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 5y agoWonder if gTLD is a thing here. If they already not on it, seems like a good (quarter million) squat.
- jimkleiber 5y agoI 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.
- lxe 5y agoJust like that one time Netflix split into Qwikster... good times
- otterley 5y agoOn keyboards without a Meta chord key, Emacs and Readline users can hit Escape first instead. Sounds like a good plan to me. ;-)
- sushsjsuauahab 5y agoWhile 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.
- tyronehed 5y agoClassic ploy: squat on an existing word with the implication that anytime someone describes something as "meta", Facebook can act like they were saying "Meta".
- cnst 5y agoNot April 1 yet?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mycentstoo 5y agoMetabook? Instameta? WhatsMeta?
- cblconfederate 5y agoMetazuck
- toomuchtodo 5y agoDystopian Ready Player One.
- jamestimmins 5y agoFairly certain that's just Ready Player One
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kaladin-jasnah 5y agoIt'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).
- pinewurst 5y agoWhile Gregarious is somewhat benevolent, the described world of RP1 in general is highly dystopian.
- goatlover 5y agoOne could argue that the benevolent company was giving people an excuse to ignore the problems in the real world. Didn't the main character gain the option to delete Gregarious Systems if he deemed it was best for the world?
- smilespray 5y ago"Oh my God, it's full of ads!"
- Waterluvian 5y agoSo is this a Google -> Alphabet thing? Or is "Facebook" being rebranded everywhere?
- 29athrowaway 5y agoDo 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 5y agoI 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-world-or-metaverse/ https://www.playableworlds.com/news/riffs-by-raph:-online-wo...
- fullshark 5y agoThis was their previous attempt: https://youtu.be/PVf3m7e7OKU https://youtu.be/PVf3m7e7OKU Which I guess became Facebook Horizon https://socialmediahq.com/whatever-happened-to-the-hype-surrounding-social-media-and-vr/ https://socialmediahq.com/whatever-happened-to-the-hype-surr...
- isoskeles 5y agoMaybe 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).
- Kinrany 5y agoIt doesn't sound any more open than then Facebookverse, so it'll just get bought out eventually.
- MBCook 5y agoThey’re getting investor money. So far that seems to be it.
- grantc 5y agoEven 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 5y agoIf 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.
- btbuildem 5y agoIf 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 5y agoIt 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.
- md8z 5y agoI 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?
- afavour 5y agoI’ve seen it said (somewhere, sorry) that humans simply aren’t designed to interact on these mass social scales. And (without evidence, I admit) that feels kind of right to me. The ideal social network is a small one. But the incentives of advertising and/or just growth in general mean that it would difficult to compete in the market against the likes of Facebook.
- threeseed 5y agoThis is completely backwards. The large scale social interaction is courtesy of the internet not from Facebook. For example websites like Reddit, HN, Twitter, TikTok etc are the ones that facilite interaction with large, broad groups of people whereas the majority of Facebook users are just interacting with their small social circle.
- jrgd 5y agoRidiculous Pointless Sad
- Imnimo 5y agoI don't think this strategy really worked for Ron Artest, but maybe it'll work for Facebook.
- duderific 5y agoHe will be rebranding as "Facebook World Peace"
- eatonphil 5y agoRenaming 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 5y agoAll I can think of is Comcast -> Xfinity and how well that's gone...
- eganist 5y agoquasi-serious: This spells the end of the expression "that's so meta" or any related quip about self-referential humor.
- alex_young 5y agoIf they are actually rebranding wouldn't that be reflected on Facebook? I don't see it.
- gregschlom 5y agoThis HN comment from last week nailed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28931821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28931821
- bxparks 5y agoHeh, 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 5y agoI wonder how much they paid for meta.com
- modeless 5y agoOther 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."
- Terretta 5y 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.
- zzixp 5y agoThis 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 5y agoYou 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.
- arduinomancer 5y agoThe 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?
- babyshake 5y agoIf 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.
- charcircuit 5y 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 5y agoWell, shucks! Years ago, I had an unpublished iOS app named Meta! Oh well!
- NelsonMinar 5y agoSee also: Philip Morris rebranding itself Altria.
- bingohbangoh 5y agoWow, did they pick the last four letter word that wasn't a startup name?
- Agathos 5y agoWhatever happened to Transmeta, anyway?
- mikestew 5y agoSo 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- regularjack 5y agoIt wasn't enough for them to ruin the world, they had to ruin the word meta too.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hwers 5y agoAll 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.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoIn 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.
- brap 5y agoThe 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.
- AndyMcConachie 5y agoIt 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.
- 7373737373 5y agoI wish he'd just present as his awkward true self, instead of this prerecorded, fake cringefest, something Musk doesn't shy away from
- ritchiea 5y agoHe’s certainly determined whatever his true self is, it’s not good for business.
- brap 5y agoIt’s amazing how no one can be frank with him. “Look mark, the CEO doesn’t have to be the presenter. I’m sorry but you just can’t be the face of the company, it’s bad for business. Please, move aside, and get a normal person haircut”.
- 7373737373 5y agoI wouldn't rule out that he could even be liked, if he didn't obviously pretend to be someone he is not
- junon 5y agoI'm one degree away from Mark. I dated someone who was an early employee at Facebook for a little while - all I can really say without revealing who they are. I just know they know Zuck, Cook, and a few others personally. They told me that when Facebook's (or maybe it was Instagram's...) stories came out with video support, Zuck posted a super bizarre video introducing it, being the first one and all. And I guess it was just him awkwardly staring into the camera, not really saying anything. Almost like someone who thinks it's a photo but it's a video instead - though he was fully aware it was a video. His wife was in the background waving and stuff too. The person I was seeing I guess texted him and said something to the effect of "hey this is super awkward, maybe you should re-post it with you talking about it", which I guess Zuck did. So it's my impression that he's not exactly surrounded by yes-men, but instead that he's not really in touch with the social aspect of running one of the largest social networks on earth and how people really behave. I know a lot of people say it's autism but as far as I was told it's not - he's just strange. This is hearsay of course, but I'm pretty confident that I was told the truth given who it was that I talked to about all this.
- wayfarer1291 5y agoThe whole presentation felt a lot like visions of the internet from companies like Microsoft (and others) in the mid-90s.. top-down, centralized.
- anter 5y agoMeta for Metastasis
- codred 5y agoPerfect!
- AJRF 5y agoI 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 5y agoYep, same. Speaks volumes!
- IceWreck 5y agoLooks like Zuckyboi is a big fan of Ready Player One.
- chowland 5y agono one cares
- ativzzz 5y agoWhile 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.
- sytelus 5y agoI 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.
- danso 5y agoI 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/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160110141037/http://meta.com/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150228180854/http://meta.compgu.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150228180854/http://meta.compg... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20081002050002/http://www.meta.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20081002050002/http://www.meta.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20100425061122/http://meta.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100425061122/http://meta.com/ [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20161023041828/http://steam.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161023041828/http://steam.com/
- minimaxir 5y agoBefore now, https://meta.com https://meta.com redirected to https://www.meta.org/ https://www.meta.org/ which is owned by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; now, there's a banner saying it will be sunset next March.
- modeless 5y agoThere 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/ https://www.metavision.com/
- jtsiskin 5y agoThe trademark was only for “Meta” in this stylized font: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86907005&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86907005&caseType=SERIAL_...
- davidw 5y agoIf 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 5y ago"That awkward moment when Zuck takes your company's name: meta.inc" https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1453790072701001728?s=20 https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1453790072701001728?s=...
- scaswqdqw 5y agoHahaha! 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 5y agoMeta or Facebook makes no difference. Nothing is going to change with this company until they are forced to publish their algorithms.
- grae_QED 5y agoThe 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 5y agoJob recruiters to prospect: Lets take a look at your meta data
- busymom0 5y agoWeird 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 5y agoClean your DNS cache. It now redirects to https://about.facebook.com/meta https://about.facebook.com/meta.
- busymom0 5y agoYep, just tried now and it fixed itself.
- mempko 5y agoMeta 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 5y agoI want off this ride.
- _bramses 5y agoMAANG just doesn't roll off the tongue as well
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- scaswqdqw 5y agoSo, regular people have troubles trademarking very complex names and they give Zuckerberg trademarks for any commonly used word. What a great equality of treatment!
- cedricgle 5y agoI guess no more project will dare to use meta in their name. They will fear either a copyright lawsuit or a fall in SEO.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agointeresting the instagram page for facebook is gone, changed to https://www.instagram.com/wearemeta/ https://www.instagram.com/wearemeta/
- olingern 5y agoThis 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?
- racl101 5y agoDrop the 'ta'. It's cleaner.
- renewiltord 5y agoWait what. They bought Meta VR like a couple of years ago. Some of my friends were there.
- mrkramer 5y agoMetaverse 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 5y agoI hope the pi-hole block list maintainers block the new domains soon.
- blhack 5y agoI’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 5y agoFAANG sounds better than MAANG though
- aserdf 5y agoi 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 5y agoLOL 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 5y agothe old comcast maneuver. if everyone hates you, change your name!
- racl101 5y agoRon 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 5y agoDoes 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?
- blhack 5y agoSome 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoThe common word "metaverse" is now under attack and will be relentlessly copyrighted and protected :) maybe this was the strategy all along!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- timwis 5y agoWait 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?
- blsapologist42 5y agoLike Alphabet
- cblconfederate 5y agoI 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)
- ngneer 5y agoGrim. 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 5y agoI somehow feel culturally appropriated.
- gotostatement 5y agothe picture for "responsible innovation" is so funny... they're like "we're approved by this disapproving black woman!"
- DethNinja 5y agoAny 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 5y 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.
- cblconfederate 5y agoWhy were they trying to make self driving cars or AI or VR games some time ago? Their real product is their stock value
- thesquib 5y agoNa fa la na ma na ma ba pa to wo ha...
- lunch 5y agoWelp, 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.
- mrkramer 5y agoWelcome to Metaverse where we have virtual sex! Enjoy your stay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGMa1Q-45ow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGMa1Q-45ow
- astlouis44 5y agoSorry 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 https://discord.gg/zUSZ3T8
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throw10920 5y ago> the metaverse will NOT be a walled garden, tied to a social media company > links to a Discord server
- micromacrofoot 5y 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 5y 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.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoI 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.
- busymom0 5y agoI 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 5y agoMeta? Does it matter?
- jliptzin 5y agoWhy 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 5y agoI 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.
- cblconfederate 5y agothere are already multiple companies named meta
- Axsuul 5y agoand basketball players
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- frakt0x90 5y agoThis person called it a week ago which I just think is impressive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28931821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28931821
- wayeq 5y agoFacebook finally caved to their rapidly aging demographic's clamoring for a VR metaverse
- bredren 5y agoCouple 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-tFdreZB94
- baby 5y agoI 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.
- bredren 5y agoThen 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.
- wayeq 5y agoSo they finally caved to their rapidly aging demographic's call for a VR enabled metaverse.
- ElonMuskrat 5y agoTheir new logo looks like a sagging pair of tits.
- jschulenklopper 5y ago“Meta” is a four-letter word. Or less ambiguous, “meta” is a word of four letters.
- throw7 5y agoCan't watch without logging into facebook. That's all you need to know.
- rektide 5y agoI 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.
- imwm 5y agometa.com – used to be a Chan-Zuckerberg initiative to discover scientific papers. Now it's Facebook's corporate home. Hmm.
- renewiltord 5y agoThis is fucking awesome. I am super bullish on the metaverse. Besides, you don't bet against the Zuck.
- aorth 5y agoI can't even watch the keynote without logging in. I don't have a Facebook account... ummmmm.
- zitterbewegung 5y agoThis sounds like googles strategy to dominate social networking with Wave…
- silentsea90 5y agoI 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.
- _yoqn 5y agoHopefully this does irreversible damage to Facebook and they have to sell off chunks of their monopoly to survive.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI'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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- schleck8 5y agoThe entire Wikipedia article is already updated haha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta,_Inc.
- m3kw9 5y agoThere 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 5y agoMeta worse.
- ebanana 5y agometa 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?
- _yoqn 5y agoThis 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoOften, 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?
- cblconfederate 5y agoFacebook 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.
- wheretogonext 5y agoThe keynote feels like I'm watching an episode of black mirror.
- Dumblydorr 5y agoCan 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.
- marknutter 5y agoWhy would anyone want to be totally immersed in a realistic virtual world? It boggles the mind.
- molsongolden 5y agoMore 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.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIt’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)
- MikusR 5y agoQuest 2 is 300$ and completely standalone
- zemo 5y ago
- jgalt212 5y agoI just want to repurpose all of Yakov Smirnoff's jokes about Russia for the metaverse.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- powerset 5y agoGlad 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.
- neom 5y agoI 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 5y agoThis is the beginning of the end. Read this comment in 10 years please.
- 3pt14159 5y agoFun 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(academic_company)
- sjg007 5y agoThe Chan-zuckerberg foundation has a scientific paper search engine called Meta as well.
- tdonia 5y agovisiting 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 5y agoFuck Uckerberg and anything that is related to thus human waste
- parenthesis 5y agoIt 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 5y agoI just saw some ads about Meta. They are beyond cringey. Facebook and Zuckerberg are out of touch.
- ppjim 5y agoSomeone predicted 10 years ago in HN that this would happen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2561810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2561810
- pronlover723 5y agoFacebook 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.
- cblconfederate 5y agoyeah 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
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- twalla 5y agoIt'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"
- 7373737373 5y agoIf it's gonna be an ad-based business model, we might end up here, HYPER-REALITY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- freediver 5y agoDoes anyone actually enjoy the VR/AR experiences in a profound way?
- malloreon 5y agoI 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 5y agoHow long until they begin to sue any other company with "meta" in its name (even pre-existing ones)? It will happen.
- buitreVirtual 5y agoThe 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoI want to read the William Gibson book that inspired this reality
- _alexander_ 5y agoFacebook lates to the party - meta.ua
- cranesnakecode 5y agoThis is going to be the Futurama metaverse where you have to fight ads everywhere to go.
- 4oo4 5y agoI'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 5y agoHow long until I get a "Come join Meta!" recruiting email?
- rexreed 5y agoCan 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?
- jazzyjackson 5y agoFax 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 5y agoI am not looking forward to all the people who get C&Ds for using the words 'meta' or 'metaverse'.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoboooo
- Snetry 5y agoI'm not exactly fond of Facebook but I think this could go in the right direction of improving their image
- cranesnakecode 5y agoThe 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 5y agoI 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-meta-mark-zuckerberg 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-meta/ 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 5y agoMeta is as anodyne as Altria.
- at_a_remove 5y agoHrm, 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 5y agoCan't wait to talk to all you guys in VR
- iblaine 5y agoReminds me of MySpace renaming itself to My_____.
- corysama 5y agoRelated: "Facebook's metaverse spending will top $10 billion this year" https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/facebook-metaverse-10-billion-dollars https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/facebook-metaverse-10-bil...
- pseudobry 5y agoLooks 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 5y agoNot to happy with this. The name of my daughter (8yo) is Meta. :-/
- karaterobot 5y agoThis 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.
- wolverine876 5y agoMeta-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.
- cblconfederate 5y agothere isnt a lot to write about as people have not seen it yet. Generic pontification about the metaverse is as old as the internet.
- wolverine876 5y agoI mean coverage of the announcement; there is plenty of that.
- hacknews20 5y agoRead 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453963
- legohead 5y agoEveryone 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."
- cblconfederate 5y agoMeta (TM): All your data are belong to us. That's why it's called metadata
- pelasaco 5y agoThat's so woke, weird and awkward. Zuckerberg, trying to be natural, the interviewer, the parties.. I hope that isn't our future
- blurbleblurble 5y agothey want to mediate all interaction, so they can tax and steer relationships
- solarkraft 5y agoI for one am excited for the Metaverse and all the Second Life jokes we will make about it.
- nanomonkey 5y agoDamn, I love the term "meta", and generally enjoy meta concepts (metamodernism, metacognition, metaverse, metamorphosis, etc.). This taints the term terribly.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoIt'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.
- cblconfederate 5y agoKeep 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 5y agoIs it just me, or is that logo a little unappealing and distorted?
- samat 5y agoFAANG → MANGA
- fairity 5y agoI 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.
- rchaud 5y agoYeah and AI will be big too one day, but that doesn’t mean IBM Watson's going to corner the market.
- mijowi 5y agoI see they already bought the meta.com domain. I wonder who owned it before and how much it cost Facebook to acquire.
- alanlammiman 5y agoGosh, you'd think that after CAMBRIdge AnalyticA, and to a lesser degree liBRA, CAMBRIA isn't the best name for the new headset...
- riffic 5y agothis is the Alphabet thing all over again. doesn't change anything.
- hmate9 5y agoMetadata would have been a better name
- encryptluks2 5y agoGood luck ever having them remove the data you share.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- haar 5y agoClick to watch the keynote... "You must log in to continue."
- rdxm 5y agoLOL....what a bunch of ass-hats. Like this is going to white-wash over the fact they are a cancer on the species and the culture...
- liminal 5y agoFacebook is working on brain-computer interfaces... because we completely trust them to have that level of access to our minds.
- rl3 5y agoOctober 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 5y agoGreat. Now when I discuss metaphysics and metaethics, I have to subconsciously suppress the visage of history's most mediocre gazillionaire.
- Cyberthal 5y agoYou have a tremendously valuable brand. You change it to a nerdy adjective.
- georgewsinger 5y agoNot part of the metaverse: https://simulavr.com https://simulavr.com
- Program_Install 5y agoThis is just some dystopian sounding shit, innit? Meta(verse, data, etc.), humans have just sold themselves out.
- omot 5y agoI'm suddenly teleported back to 2006 when people didn't take Facebook seriously at all.
- spoonjim 5y agoShould have called it “Verse.”
- Mockapapella 5y agoI 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
- sergiotapia 5y agoLogo looks like a ballsack. https://i.imgur.com/iucCEuc.png https://i.imgur.com/iucCEuc.png
- gonehome 5y agoYou can watch the connect talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKPNJ8sOU_M&t=867s 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.
- Grakel 5y agoGod, 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 5y agoWho wants to bet Zuckerberg is the ONLY one within the company that wants this and other employees are rolling their eyes?
- anonu 5y agoI 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27723460
- simonh 5y agoPresumably 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoThanks 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 5y agoHilariously, when you follow the above link, the site doesn't honor the back button. Figures.
- swayvil 5y agoWhen 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoFinally, someone found a way to get everybody off "Facebook".
- d--b 5y agoIn 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.
- danShumway 5y agoThe 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?
- hbn 5y 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
- fillipvt 5y agoWould Meta be able to build a federated Metaverse? If they are, things are different.
- joshruby16 5y agofacebookrebrand.com is available. ;-) shleiby @ gmail
- jay_kyburz 5y agoThe 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 5y agoMaybe they can just buy Roblox.
- neop1x 5y 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.
- cblconfederate 5y agoWe 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 5y agoGood 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.
- NotChina 5y agoSo Zucks email will be data@meta.com?
- throwawaymanbot 5y agoBahahahaha!! Pathetic.
- guerrilla 5y agoMetastatic.
- chrisvalleybay 5y agoYou 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.
- cblconfederate 5y agoYeah 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 5y agoFrom Fecesbook to Metacrap!
- tornato7 5y agoGrowing 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 5y agoThere 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoWhat 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 5y agoI 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.
- musicale 5y agodup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29033358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29033358 but I'll add my dup comment for good measure: META: Make Everything Terrible Again
- musicale 5y agoWrong 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 5y agoOdd 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 5y agoI cannot think of a worse group of people to be spearheading this effort. Are Facebook execs really this tone deaf?
- bprasanna 5y agoFor a common man like me it feels like: too much bad publicity change the identity!
- SquibblesRedux 5y agoThis 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome
- porknubbins 5y agoIf 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 5y agoGuess we all need to start saying MAANG now
- eutropia 5y agofrom faang to Manga?
- interstice 5y agoWith 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?
- codr7 5y agoPhew, all they were really missing was a good name.
- TechZillennial 5y ago150 million on AR/VR... I get the feeling this is gonna flop. Hard.
- omgitsabird 5y agoI 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 5y agoHas anyone done the studies on eye health with long durations of AR/VR ala Oculus usage?
- fbrncci 5y agoFAANG becomes MAANG.
- DeathArrow 5y agoWhy not rename The Facebook to The Matrix?
- mro_name 5y agoI couldn't care less. Oh – will have to change my blocklists for some new domains? Any hints to a list somewhere?
- sytelus 5y agoMy 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 5y agoAccording 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.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> people and government So, just “people”?
- sytelus 5y agoInternet 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?
- DeathArrow 5y agoThere 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 5y agoMark thinks hes James Halliday
- mikewarot 5y agoFacebook 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.
- megamix 5y agoSo what's changed?
- a_ba 5y agoNever 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.
- tipiirai 5y agoMark's vision is a polished version of what is actually going to happen, which is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- mmarq 5y agohttps://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is-murder/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is-murder/ :)
- optimalsolver 5y agoThis kind of thing works. Very few people today know that Chiquita used to be the infamous United Fruit Company.
- arendtio 5y ago> A future made by all of us You can't even watch the keynote without a Facebook account...
- varispeed 5y agoThat 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.
- varispeed 5y agoIf you gold wrap a turd, it's still a turd.
- kieckerjan 5y agoWonder 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 5y agoAint this no different from google's alphabet?
- jonashendel 5y agonow its maang companies, not faang
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoFacebook, 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.
- Mindwipe 5y agoThe 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 5y agoIt'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 5y agoSo 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 5y agoReady Player One anyone?
- nix23 5y agoOh look Zucki makes the keynote on his home-planet, pretty cool...i like that new openness: https://about.facebook.com/meta/ https://about.facebook.com/meta/
- metta2uall 5y agoWhere 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 5y agoZuck watched ready player one and was inspired by the villain.