Vox
Facebook Inc., the name that we are all familiar with will no longer lead the social media conglomerate. Facebook Inc. has officially changed its name to ‘Meta’ to redefine what the company has been up to and is looking forward to, in the future. However, this was not the only announcement that CEO Mark Zuckerberg made during the virtual keynote.
Facebook has also unveiled its plans for the next big thing in the world of social media, ‘Horizon’. This is the name for the revolutionary ‘Meta’ social interactions, as in how people will create avatars and interact with each other on the metaverse.
It is completely okay if you don’t understand what a metaverse is. But let’s understand what ‘Horizon’ really is.
As mentioned by Zuckerberg during the virtual keynote, Horizon is the future of social media within the metaverse. People can create avatars and different worlds with the combination of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality to provide users with a more immersive experience while they are online. As mentioned in a report by Money Control, Facebook Inc., soon to be officially called ‘Meta’, will also support interoperability, meaning a feature that allows digital items that a user buys or creates within the metaverse to be used across multiple platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg surely has some major revolutionary plans with Horizon. He said during the virtual keynote that how we have transitioned from desktop to web to smartphones, text messages to photo and video, and he promises that it is not where we draw the line. The future of social media has geared up to become the next big revolution.
“We have gone from desktop to web to phone, from text to photos to video, but this isn’t the end of the line. The next platform and medium will be even more immersive… an embodied internet, where you are in the experience, not just looking at it,” said Mark Zuckerberg
This is what Zuckerberg calls the metaverse where users will be able to feel present at the moment, right there in the same room with the people that are sitting halfway across the world from us.
In addition to this, Zuckerberg made a very interesting point, saying that it is not about spending more time on screens, it is about making the time we already spend online better and immersive.
In the next five to ten years, metaverse will become the mainstream social network. However, it is still sad to bid farewell to Facebook Inc. after so many years.
