CEO Mark Zuckerberg is so excited about the process of building the metaverse that it has caused frustration among employees at Meta (formerly Facebook). “It’s the only thing Mark wants to talk about,” a director-level executive who recently left the company told Business Insider.
Another contributor told the publication that Zuckerberg’s recent decisions are “basically fostering disorganization and anxiety.” According to the source, “people really don’t seem to know what to deliver or what to work on, because there’s still no coherent strategy.”
Also according to Business Insider, Meta is creating specific teams for the metaverse. Employees will have to start letting people know that there is a “metaverse playbook.”
A spokesperson for the company said it was “going through a defining period and we’re pushing hard. A lot of people are excited but have a lot of questions at the same time,” he said.
What is the metaverse and what has Meta already done?
Although Facebook changed its name to Meta, the metaverse concept doesn’t necessarily have an owner. It was not created by Zuckerberg’s company.
However, the CEO has a dream of creating his own metaverse, which he says will be the biggest revolution in the way we interact online since the invention of the smartphone.
If the metaverse really is the future of the internet, Zuckerberg wants his company to be synonymous with it—hence the name Meta.
In a meeting with journalists last year, Sue Yong, director of products at Facebook, said that the big difference is that “instead of just looking at the screen, you will be there”.
The idea is that, in the future, we will interact with the internet as if we were literally “inside” it. People will have virtual avatars that will be their representations in this digital world. Through them, they will be able to talk, work and connect with friends and relatives.
If you thought of the movie Player Number 1 (2018), the idea really is similar to that. What is imagined about the metaverse is that to participate in this “world”, people will need special glasses and even bracelets that capture the movements of the hands.
Since last year, Zuckerberg’s company has also been developing products, devices and platforms that we will use to build and inhabit this universe. Among them, smart glasses and bracelets and programs to design digital environments or avatars.
In all, Zuckerberg’s conglomerate promises to invest more than US$ 200 million in its vision of the metaverse, including US$ 150 million in training programmers capable of building the virtual environments that will be used in this parallel world.
