Facebook posts job ad for 10,000 'high-skilled' roles to 'build the metaverse' – and they'll all be based in the EU Brit political has-been and Facebook global affairs veep Nick Clegg fired off a missive over the weekend announcing that the antisocial network would be hiring 10,000 people from across the European Union to help "BUILD THE METAVERSE" (VERSE-VERSE-VERSE-VERSE). What's the metaverse? Well, no one's quite sure – it doesn't exist …
This post has been deleted by its author
I'm sure visions like this are a great way to get yourself noticed if you work somewhere like Facebook, but who's going to actually want to use it for any length of time? I can't see it being anything more than a world of not greatly convincing graphics, where you get to do little more than roam a virtual shopping mall and get constantly bombarded with advertising in order to pay for the huge cost of constructing and running it. An hour of it would probably be enough to send anyone stark raving mad and go "I spent two grand on a vr headset for this shit?".
That is FB's taking their system to the extreme. They want all eyes on their platforms 24-7. Thus, nothing will ever be made, transported, or in shops as there won't be any shops with everyone scrolling FB all the time.
Raises a few questions.. FB is built on "eyes" and advertising. If everyone is on FB, no one is working. So without a workforce, who will supply the products that provide their advertising revenue? Come to think of it, who will provide the work necessary to keep FB running?
This isn't well thought out, IMO.
Icon: Because this is FB and they're watching everything.
I'm worried both by the lack of mention in the article, and the lack of people upvoting you for highlighting this. Inexplicable disregard for the inventor.
Ok, so he was influenced by MUDs and undoubtably by Neuromancer and the current work towards a 'metaverse' is probably going to end up resembling Tad Williams' Otherland vision more than a single monolithic metaverse, but give the man credit where it's due.
until someone breaks their neck falling down the real world stairs they couldn't see while in VR.
AR strikes me as potentially useful, VR is a recipe for 7x24 couch potatoes and/or major injuries. I can see the ambulance chasers personal injury claims lawyers rubbing their hands with glee about VR.
There's a lot of fun VR games, and it's potentially a really great way to demo and test out buildings and similar to clients before building the real thing.
There's a lot of buildings with really silly architectural mistakes that a virtual walk through would have spotted before a single RSJ was cut.
TBH, I think AR is more niche, as it needs much larger physical spaces to be useful.
Every now and then, someone pops up and thinks that the classic sci-fi thing where people use some kind of 3D environment as the Internet would be pretty cool.
Every single time, the thing crashes and burns, in those rare cases where it manages to take off at all.
And then, the next bright spark who thinks of the classic sci-fi thing, each and every time, completely fails to learn from their predecessors' mistakes.
Has anyone at Facebook thought, and thought really hard, about why nobody ever used VRML? Why Second Life failed? Why hardly anybody used the PS3 social 3D thing, what was it called, Playstation Life? Seriously, is there any significant demand for a shared social 3D space that isn't a videogame?
I'm being honest here. Because, if they did ask themselves those questions, and if they do have valid answers, I would really, really like to hear them.
Sometimes, either the culture changes enough, or as the tech gets better (or cheaper), and there's a transition to it going from unpopular to popular. And all the apparently excellent the reasons why "nobody will ever use that thing" turn out to be no more than smoke.
Video calls have, as I recall, quite a long history where they were - by today's standards - hardly ever used and considered largely pointless.
Of course predicting the transition is not easy, and some things will never make it. And given the range of predictions available, someone will always be "right" ... even if only for now.
"No one company will own and operate the metaverse," the company said.
Then it will fail because it's not actually solving a problem. At least the Internet was solving some problems back when it was being developed. This "metaverse" is just a big wank by Big Corp to stir up press-releases and make some extra $$$ before the idea crashes and dozens of users are left with non-working hardware.
I do hope they name the first room/building/planet "Zune" in honor of those who've gone before...
needs to build one too... a nice 5 story virtual office building on farceborks main street
We can jeer at the passers by, the sub editors can inhabit the basement, and we'll snatch important people in the world of IT and feed them to the BoFH
Much like these guys do in the world of banking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNlYBNTCBG8
For clarification, hate FakeBook, but like the Snowcrash idea!
Let's partition it into "like-minded" areas - for instance Brexiteer's, conspiracy theorist's & Trump-ist's go in one area - provisionally named " F*ckwit City"
You get to level up your Orc avatars & each Jan 6th, July 4th & other memorable dates, it's Battle Royale!
:)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
