Can Zuckerberg, who has entered VR, realize the ambition of the metaverse?
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The fiery status quo of the Metaverse is inseparable from Zuckerberg’s first-hand boost.
At the end of October last year, Zuckerberg announced that he would change the name of Facebook’s parent company to Meta, and develop the metaverse business in an attempt to create another digital reality. Although Zuckerberg's approach was ridiculed by the group, some netizens described Facebook's name change as "Facebook shameless". But there's no denying that Zuckerberg's timing was impeccable. Searches for the "metaverse" have soared since October, and Wall Street is fanning the flames.
Not only that, in order to demonstrate his determination to go to the metaverse, Zuckerberg not only changed Facebook's name to Meta, but also carried out deep cultivation in the field of VR . In fact, since Meta acquired Oculus in 2014, Zuckerberg has not stopped investing heavily in it, and the products launched have steadily improved from Rift to Quest 2 generation after generation. But the question is, can VR fulfill Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions?
Facebook's development crisis
Behind Zuckerberg's name change and rush to the metaverse is Facebook's unavoidable development anxiety.
In 2004, Zuckerberg founded the social networking site Facebook, surviving in the encirclement of several giants such as Google and Twitter. The legendary story of Facebook's exponential explosion has made Zuckerberg known as the "Second Gate" and "The King of Social Networking" without hesitation.
It is a pity that Facebook is not worthy of the reputation of the "big brother" in global social networking. Instead, it has been caught in the turmoil of data security, violation of user privacy, and the use of market monopoly position to seek illegitimate interests . More and more "trouble" has been placed. in front of Zuckerberg.
In recent years, Facebook has successively acquired popular applications such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, creating a "social empire" of unprecedented scale. A set of data released in 2019 shows that in the past ten years, among the top five MAU apps in the world, four belong to Facebook.
Of course, greatness is not the original sin. The fundamental problem is that Facebook’s unrestricted expansion of mergers and acquisitions has seriously squeezed the living space of many industry individuals, and at the same time, with the advantages of market share and social software, users have formed a huge impact on Facebook. Dependence on the user, the uncontrolled value "scraping" was carried out on the users. "New Republic" pointed out in the criticism of Facebook that Facebook, relying on its monopoly position, pursues interests without limit, and then has no bottom line, such as: pushing viral advertisements to users, leaking user privacy, secretly obtaining user biometrics, etc. farce .
In the early years, the huge turmoil of Facebook information leakage became the most difficult and biggest "stain" for the company . In 2018, the New York Times and the British Guardian broke the news that there were more than 50 million users on Facebook. The information was obtained by the data analysis company "Cambridge Analytica" without the user's knowledge, and the company developed a large number of promotional products to accurately target users. The ultimate goal is to help the Trump team run for the US presidential election in 2016.
In addition, in 2020, Facebook's Instagram was accused of "illegally" using users' mobile phone cameras to steal the biometric data of hundreds of millions of Instagram users, only to provide advertisers with more valuable information and thus achieve more profits.
In 2021, Facebook was also hit with a £2.3 billion (approximately RMB 19.8 billion) class action lawsuit in the UK because between 2015 and 2019, Facebook imposed unfair terms and conditions, requiring 44 million users to hand over their personal data to access the social network and abuse its market dominance to earn billions of dollars in various advertising dollars.
Of course, more importantly, Facebook has encountered a bottleneck in the development of its existing technology and business model, and its stock price has been seriously overvalued and overdrafted . After all, Zuckerberg's Facebook is just an open global social application platform driven by Internet technology, and the underlying hardware technology of this software social platform is not Facebook's, and the system that supports this application is not even Facebook's— -Facebook does not have the core technology to support its development.
That's why Facebook has always needed to copy rival apps and features: When video conferencing app Zoom went viral, Zuckerberg quickly launched its highly similar Messenger Rooms; when live-streaming apps Twitch and YouTube Gaming gradually took over the market Later, Zuckerberg took out Facebook Gaming; when the profit of the American version of "salted fish" Craigslist was very objective, Zuckerberg sent Facebook Marketplace.
Some even pointed out that the popular Stories feature of Facebook's Instagram "copied" Snapchat, and the app Reels on Instagram directly "copied" TikTok.
Towards the Utopia of the Metaverse
To convince Wall Street with a more compelling story ahead of Facebook's growth slump, Zuckerberg helped fuel the popularity of the "metaverse" concept. Moreover, in order to demonstrate his determination to develop the metaverse, Zuckerberg not only changed Facebook’s name to Meta, but also carried out deep cultivation in the field of VR .
After all, it's important for Facebook to invest in an area where it can see benefits sooner. You must know that more than 90% of Facebook's revenue is realized by its own traffic on social media. As mentioned above, this too single business model has been criticized all the time. This kind of doubt has been leaked after 50 million user data was leaked and The abuse of "data gate" intensified.
At the same time, Tik Tok and Snapchat, which have richer business models, have gradually grown, forcing Facebook to seek changes. Therefore, choosing a VR industry that can make products faster and gain profits has become Zuckerberg's realistic consideration based on a rich business model .
Moreover, from the perspective of long-term development, the relatively mature VR field can also help Meta establish a good content ecology, accumulate enough consumer market scale, and lay a solid foundation for the next step into the Metaverse. Zuckerberg cited the success of Quest 2 as an example: "Quest 2 has become one of the mainstream VR headsets in just a few months", "The content ecology and development ecology have also been established, which means that now you buy one Quest 2, as well as fitness applications such as "FitXR" and "Supernatural", some social, office, business and other applications involving all aspects are available for you to use." Zuckerberg believes that 10 million active users are in the VR C-end market. "threshold". He said that as it gets closer to this threshold, the ecology will become more and more prosperous.
Meanwhile, according to The Information, Meta’s current product roadmap has revealed plans for the release of six headsets. Between now and 2024, Meta will launch four VR headsets, internally codenamed Cambria, Funston, Stinson, and Cardiff. Among them, Cambria is a high-end flagship VR headset, which may be launched in September this year. Subsequently, Meta will launch a VR headset code-named Stinson in 2023, the device is the follow-up to the Quest series.
In 2024, Meta will also launch a VR headset code-named Funston, which is an iterative version of Cambria, and Cardiff as an iterative product of Stinson, a new product in the Quest series. That is to say, Meta will alternately release high-end VR headsets and low-end VR headsets, and VR headsets with different price ranges will help Meta seize most of the VR headset market share. At the same time, Meta will also release two AR glasses, the internal codes of which are Nazare and Hypernova. Among them, Nazare will be launched in 2024, while Hypernova, an AR glasses with stronger functions, will be launched in 2026.
Of particular note is the possible release of the Cambria in the second half of this year. Although many media and analysts regard this Cambria VR headset as Oculus Quest 3 or Oculus Quest 2 Pro, Zuckerberg himself said at the Connect 2021 conference: "Cambria is different from Quest 2. A product, mainly for the high-end market.”
The VR headset has a higher-resolution image display, and people can also use it to send emails or text messages. Inside Meta, Cambria is often called Arcata by developers. The device has two highlights, full-color perspective and face tracking, which can enhance the user's MR experience.
Cambria's outward-facing cameras allow the VR headset's screen to display real-world scenes. The full-color see-through function of the device not only allows the VR headset to present a completely virtual scene, but also allows the VR headset to display information from the real world and the virtual world at the same time, just like AR glasses. At the same time, Cambria's built-in sensors can track users' eyes and facial expressions in real time, which can help users generate virtual avatars of users in applications such as Meta's Horizon Worlds and Workrooms.
The distance between ideal and reality
The ideal of entering the metaverse through the relatively mature VR realm is beautiful, but the reality is always skinny.
From a technical standpoint, according to The Information, the current Cambria VR headset also uses the Android-based VR operating system. This means that users cannot use any common working software designed for PC through VR devices, and can only enjoy some functions of the web version of the software through VR web browsers. Meta seems to be aware of this issue as well, adding support for opening multiple windows in a web browser in a recent Quest 2 update. However, how to allow users to use some commonly used work software through the Cambria VR headset is still one of the challenges Meta faces in promoting the application of VR headsets in work scenarios.
At the same time, according to the previous news summary of The Information, Meta’s self-research plan in the VR field has repeatedly suffered setbacks . Since 2022, Meta has not only given up building a new VR operating system framework, but its self-developed processor is not as good as Qualcomm's XR 2 processor. This means that it is difficult for Meta to open a big gap with domestic and foreign VR headset manufacturers such as Pico, HTC, Lynx and so on on the basis of VR equipment hardware . On the other hand, the setbacks of the two hardware R&D teams also resulted in a certain waste of resources.
Not only that, but the cadence of new product releases is often influenced by multiple factors. For example, the Cambria VR headset was supposed to be launched at the end of last year, but due to the impact of supply chain capacity, the epidemic and the progress of research and development, it was postponed until September this year. Therefore, Meta's product roadmap is for reference only, and the specific release rhythm of new products needs to be determined according to the situation. In recent years, Meta's new products are often not launched as scheduled, which affects the release rhythm.
Of course, the fundamental reason why it is difficult for Mete to come up with a decent VR/AR product is that it is not the application level of the terminal that determines the VR/AR product, but the underlying industry chain technology of the entire VR/AR is still immature. Support large-scale commercial popularization applications.
In fact, so far, due to the lack of content and services and the imperfect application ecology, no explosive and benchmark-level VR applications that can meet the needs of consumers have appeared , and consumer-oriented virtual reality development content lacks monetization channels and has not yet formed. Good industrial ecology and positive cycle. Investment agency Goldman Sachs recently stated in a report on AR and VR technology that although VR technology is improving, so far, VR headsets have not become a just-in-demand product for consumers, and a small number of people still use VR devices. In other words, the current VR headset market size is still in the early stage of development.
In addition, most of the existing application cases are customized solutions, there is no clear industry application idea, and the conditions for large-scale popularization in the industry are not met, and the progress path of multi-industry integration and application is not clear. Not only that, some current secondary but very critical issues that will directly affect the user experience, and thus determine the user's willingness to use, also require more solutions, such as the heating of electronic components, high computing power, high communication bandwidth, and device development. heat and heat dissipation issues.
Ultimately, there are other considerations behind Zuckerberg's ambitious announcement of a blueprint for the metaverse. The technology industry is never short of new concepts, and this field needs new waves of enthusiasm to drive continuous attention and investment. Almost every one or two years, technology giants and the venture capital industry will launch one after another new hot words, introducing novel cutting-edge technologies, showing future life visions, investing huge amounts of money to build an ecosystem, and pushing up stock prices and market capitalization.
Just like the Libra plan launched by Facebook two years ago, Zuckerberg is ambitious to form a global decentralized encrypted payment system. The ambition of this super-sovereign currency project is no less than the current metaverse, and it may even be realized” The dream of "global finance without borders" also once brought a significant increase to Facebook's stock price. However, Facebook had to shelve the Libra project indefinitely last year under the joint efforts of regulators in various countries.
And now, the "metaverse" may be the next concept that Zuckerberg found after the Libra vision was wiped out. We still don't know whether the metaverse will go back to Libra, but blindly revelling in the metaverse will inevitably fall into that. Time Libra's trap.