US social media giant Facebook will create a new Metaverse product group to build 3D shared spaces, the company announced in a post on Monday.
Andrew Bosworth, Head of Facebook Reality Labs, will head the new group, the announcement read.
Mr Bosworth explained, citing milestones achieved from the Facebook’s Oculus and Portal products:
“to achieve our full vision of the Metaverse, we also need to build the connective tissue between these spaces — so you can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room in your home to the next”
He added Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram, as well as Facebook Gaming’s VP Vivek Sharma and VP of Play and Content Jason Rubin will join in leading the new initiative.
The VP also linked to Facebook’s VR/AR careers’ page which advertised nearly 720 open positions. The news also comes amid a wave of achievements from the world’s most popular social media platform.
Zuckerberg Statements on Facebook’s Metaverse Pivot
Bosworth’s comments echo similar statements from Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Facebook, who said in an interview with the Verge on Monday his company’s goal was to “bring the metaverse to life” and become a “metaverse company”.
He said at the time the Menlo Park-based firm had shifted to VR technologies over the last five years “because it’s the technology that delivers the clearest form of presence.”
Zuckerberg added Facebook is also building an “infinite office” platform for connecting professionals across VR workplaces in a bid to ‘flatten out’ distance between colleagues.
The tech giant’s VR division, Oculus, also released its Passthrough API Experimental, which offers new features for augmented reality (AR) developers to merge real and real-time 3D (RT3D) content.
The comments come amid growing competition among metaverse firms, including HTC VIVE, Varjo, ENGAGE, Netflix, UpWorlds, and many others, who are working to keep users connected amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and rapid enterprise and consumer-level shifts to virtual spaces.
