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At this time, what is Zuckerberg’s “careful thinking” when changing his name?

At the Connect conference in the early hours of this morning, Facebook officially announced that it “abandoned” the name that has been used for 17 years and changed to a new name “Meta”. The stock code will also be changed from “FB” to “MVRS”, which will take effect on December 1. .

After that, the original Facebook business will become a subsidiary like Oculus, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Why change the name?

Zuckerberg’s answer: To further tell everyone who we are? what are you doing?

Presumably careful netizens have discovered that “Meta” is exactly the first half of “Metaverse”, and the latter is the new track that Facebook and Zuckerberg have been promoting and focusing on in recent days.

But a coincidence here also made Facebook and Zuckerberg face doubts from the outside world.

After the brand “deteriorates”, Facebook diverts attention by changing its name?

Since the beginning of the month, there has been the worst outage in history, and then the “whistleblower” former product manager Francis Haugen has publicly accused Facebook products of harming children, amplifying prejudice, and encouraging polarization.

For a time, Facebook’s external brand image suffered a heavy blow, and people’s trust in it inevitably declined.

At this time, Facebook revealed that it will change its name. The motive behind it is hard not to doubt that it wants to divert some of its attention by changing its name, while rebranding and creating a new image.

In this regard, although Zuckerberg denied the connection in an interview with the media and called the association “a bit ridiculous” on the grounds that “the current environment is not suitable for introducing new brands”, as to whether the truth is true, Only Zuckerberg and Facebook know.

But one thing’s for sure, Zuckerberg is working hard to rip off the company’s “social media” label and put a new label on it as “metaverse.”

“Today, we’re often thought of as a social media company, but in our DNA, we’re a company that builds technology that connects people. The Metaverse is the next frontier of technology, just like we built social networks back in the day.” Kerberg said in a video of the conference.

Before the Connect conference, through Zuckerberg’s external speech, we can learn that he is “very optimistic” about the Metaverse, and has launched a number of actions for this, including but not limited to:

Andrew Bosworth, head of hardware and who led Facebook’s Metaverse team, took over as chief technology officer;

From the fourth quarter, let Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), which includes AR and VR businesses, disclose its performance and conduct investment activities independently;

Over $10 billion has been invested in the VR and AR sector so far this year;

Officially announced that it will invest 50 million US dollars to build the Metaverse with partners;

…

At the Connect conference, around the “metaverse” track, Facebook also brought a number of software and hardware products.

Zuckerberg “paints the pie” around the Metaverse

As we all know, VR/AR is currently regarded as the product and approach that is closest to the metaverse form, and this industry is also in the hands of Facebook in the past.

But it’s rather disappointing that Facebook spent most of this Connect conference “painting a pie” around the metaverse.

Next, let’s look at a few key parts:

All-in-one VR headset Project Cambira

According to Zuckerberg, this is a high-end headset with new features that will launch next year and will not replace the $299 Quest 2.

Functionally, Cambira can track facial and eye movements, make natural eye contact between Avatar images, and refresh facial expressions in real time. In addition, the headset has an all-black design, uses the PankCake optical scheme, has a color see-through function, and is equipped with a camera that can transmit high-resolution full-color video to the headset screen.

AR glasses Project Nazare

It’s a consumer AR glasses that Zuckerberg describes as the company’s “first full-fledged AR glasses,” but it’s just years away.

In a brief mock concept, Zuckerberg recounts a typical scenario where users send messages via Whatsapp and organize a game night. The friend’s avatar suddenly appears in the user’s field of vision, and the game begins.

“To get the form factor and experience right, we still need a lot of technical work. We need to integrate holographic displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom chips, cameras, speakers, and sensors that map the world around us into a roughly 5mm thick surface. Glasses are in shape. So we’re still a long way from Nazare, but we’re making good progress,” Zuckerberg said.

Horizon Home

This is a virtual space for different users to gather, communicate and collaborate as part of the “Metaverse” hub along with Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms and the events app Horizon Venues (previously known as Venues).

From the demo video, users can build their own experiences, such as watching movies, etc., and even invite guests to join the experience in the form of avatars.

Most importantly, when a message pops up, a virtual dialog box will pop up in the space of Horizon Home, and Facebook also plans to add Messenger audio calls to VR in the future. This means that even if the user is in a VR environment, they can normally receive messages and make video calls with the outside world.

In addition, the Facebook team also announced that it will provide Oculus Quest with more apps for multitasking, including 2D apps like Slack, a team communication tool, and Dropbox, a free online file sync tool.

Presence Platform Development Tools

The tool lets developers create mixed reality experiences for the Oculus Quest and consists of three main toolsets: Insight SDK, Interaction SDK, and Voice SDK.

Insight SDK – Building on the Passthrough API launched this summer, allows developers to overlay virtual objects on the Oculus Quest’s passthrough video feed.

Among them, the toolset also has two functions: spatial anchor point and scene understanding. The former allows developers to “lock” virtual objects to specific physical areas so that objects maintain their position in the world; the latter allows developers to build A virtual reality experience that matches the scale of the player’s room.

Interaction SDK – Makes it easier for developers to integrate controllers and hand-centric interactions.

As part of this, the toolset improves hand tracking, enabling developers to create their own gestures, or to incorporate ready-made interaction elements such as “grab,” “poke,” “select,” and “target,” and more .

Voice SDK – by Facebook’s Wit. The toolset powered by the ai natural language platform.

The toolset can provide users with a hands-free virtual experience, allowing developers to create voice navigation and search capabilities.

at last

After the Connect conference, Zuckerberg also sent an open letter, in which he wrote:

It is hoped that in the next decade, the Metaverse will reach a billion people, carry hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce, and provide jobs for millions of creators and developers.

And he also emphasized that the company is no longer Facebook-first, but Metaverse-first.

But it takes time to get to the Metaverse, so Meta has also taken action in the field of education – investing $150 million in three years to build an ecosystem that supports learning in the Metaverse. The focus will be on training the next generation of AR/VR creators, transforming learning through high-quality immersive experiences, and increasing access to education through technology.

It can be seen that Zuckerberg’s obsession with the “metaverse” is very deep, but he doesn’t know whether his obsession will eventually become a reality as scheduled. I don’t know if this wave of changing names, tearing off old labels, and putting on new labels can successfully pull him and the company out of the negative impact of the scandal.