“we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company” (Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been discussing his desire to contribute to a metaverse for many months now.) Earlier this month, The New York Times explored how companies and products including Epic Games’ Fortnite, Roblox, and even Animal Crossing: New Horizons increasingly had metaverse-like elements. Coined in Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel, the term refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space. “Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life.”

“What I think is most interesting is how these themes will come together into a bigger idea,” Zuckerberg said.

The company’s divisions focused on products for communities, creators, commerce, and virtual reality would increasingly work to realize this vision, he said in a remote address to employees. Instead, he said, Facebook would strive to build a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi - a world known as the metaverse. The future of the company would go far beyond its current project of building a set of connected social apps and some hardware to support them. As June came to an end, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his employees about an ambitious new initiative.

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