Metaverse Introduction:
Mark Zuckerberg defines the metaverse as the next platform and medium that will succeed the mobile internet, creating an immersive, embodied internet where users feel like they’re “in” the experience.

Metaverse’s Potential:
The metaverse has the potential to transform various aspects of our online lives, including social interactions, entertainment, gaming, work, and shopping, offering entirely new experiences.

Embodiment and Presence:
The metaverse will enable users to feel present, as if they were physically present with others, regardless of their physical distance.

Enhancing Human Connection:
Zuckerberg believes that the metaverse will provide a more natural and vivid way to connect with others, expressing emotions and building relationships in a more immersive way.

Beyond Screens:
The metaverse aims to move beyond traditional screens, allowing users to enter and be part of these immersive experiences, creating a deeper sense of presence and connection.

Integrating Existing Technologies:
The metaverse will utilize existing technologies and build upon emerging ones, bringing together various components to create a cohesive and immersive digital environment.

Experiencing the Metaverse:
While the metaverse is still under development, it can be glimpsed through various existing building blocks and emerging technologies, offering a sense of how it might feel to be fully immersed in this virtual realm.

Introduction and Goals:
Mark Zuckerberg provided a glimpse into the future of the metaverse, focusing on the potential for immersive experiences and the significance of avatars, home spaces, and interoperability.

Feeling of Presence:
The defining characteristic of the metaverse will be a strong sense of presence, allowing users to feel like they are physically present with others.

Avatars and Representation:
Avatars will play a crucial role in representing users in the metaverse, becoming as common as profile pictures today. These avatars will be living 3D representations, capable of expressing emotions, gestures, and individuality.

Personal Home Spaces:
Users will have customizable home spaces, similar to virtual homes, where they can invite others, display their digital goods, and even work from a virtual home office.

Teleportation and Interoperability:
Teleporting between different spaces in the metaverse will be as simple as clicking a link on the internet, making it an open and accessible experience. Interoperability will enable users to take their avatars and digital items across different apps and experiences, ensuring their usefulness and ownership.

Privacy and Safety:
Privacy and safety will be fundamental to the metaverse, allowing users to control their interactions and choose when to be with others or seek solitude.

Holograms and the Integration of Physical and Digital:
Users will be able to bring objects from the physical world into the metaverse and project items into the physical world as holograms using augmented reality.

New Interaction Methods:
Natural interaction methods, such as gestures, voice commands, and even thought control, will enhance the immersive experience and minimize the intrusive nature of devices.

Conclusion:
Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse emphasizes presence, avatars, interoperability, privacy, and seamless integration of physical and digital worlds, shaping the future of online experiences and social interaction.

Mark Zuckerberg outlines the foundational concepts of the metaverse, a virtual world that seamlessly blends the physical and digital realms. Horizon Home and Horizon Worlds, social platforms within the metaverse, enable users to interact, create, and explore immersive experiences with friends. Horizon Workrooms facilitates collaboration, allowing users to connect and work together in virtual meeting spaces. Spark AR introduces new creator capabilities, supporting 3D objects that can interact realistically with the physical world, enabling immersive storytelling experiences. Gaming in the metaverse encompasses a wide range of experiences, from traditional gaming to lifelike simulations and experiences that defy the limitations of traditional gaming. Rockstar Games classic Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is in development for Quest 2, offering a new way to experience the iconic open world in virtual reality. Fitness in the metaverse offers innovative ways to stay active, including boxing lessons, sword fighting, and dancing, with the ability to work out in new worlds against AI or multiplayer, even with friends across the globe.

Metaverse: A New Frontier for Remote Collaboration:
Zuckerberg envisions a future where remote work becomes the norm, necessitating better collaboration tools. Metaverse offers a solution with virtual workspaces that replicate the physical office experience without the constraints of distance.

Enhanced Work Experience and Immersive Meetings:
Employees can enjoy a sense of shared presence and spontaneous interactions in virtual workplaces. Enhanced work setups enable efficient collaboration and productivity, all while allowing employees to remain comfortable in their own space.

Virtual Space for Focused Work:
Virtual workplaces provide distraction-free environments for focused work and collaboration. Immersive presentations simulate in-person interactions, allowing teams to share ideas as if they were in the same room.

Customizable Workspaces and Integration of 2D Apps:
Customization options allow businesses to personalize their virtual offices with logos and posters. Integration of 2D progressive web apps enhances productivity by enabling easy access to popular services like Dropbox and Slack within the metaverse.

Expanding the Metaverse to Support Work Accounts:
Acknowledging user feedback, Meta is working to enable login using non-personal Facebook accounts. Work account support is being tested, with a broader shift planned within the next year.

Benefits for Society and Economy:
Access to jobs in diverse locations promotes opportunity and reduces commuting time. Environmental benefits include reduced carbon emissions by minimizing work-related travel.

Teleportation and Shared Experiences:
Teleportation allows seamless movement between virtual spaces, facilitating collaboration and interaction. Shared projects and immersive virtual spaces extend beyond work, creating valuable experiences in other contexts.

Marnie’s Role and Future Explorations:
Marnie, the Chief Business Officer, will delve deeper into the various categories of experiences enabled by the metaverse. Zuckerberg promises further exploration of the metaverse’s potential in various domains.

Learning in the Metaverse:
Metaverse enhances learning by allowing immersive experiences with virtual reality headsets or glasses. Interactive schematics, service manuals, and VR documentaries provide hands-on learning opportunities. Medical students can practice surgeries in virtual environments, and Earth science students can explore ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef.

150 Million Dollar Investment:
Meta is allocating $150 million to train the next generation of creators to build immersive learning content. This investment aims to increase access to devices and provide a professional curriculum and certification process for Spark AR creators.

Metaverse Economy: A Creator-Centric Approach:
Mark Zuckerberg emphasizes the importance of a vibrant creator economy in the Metaverse’s development. Meta aims to serve as many people as possible, offering services at cost or with modest fees to foster innovation and growth. Affordable devices, sideloading support, and low developer fees are key to fostering a thriving ecosystem.

Metaverse Commerce:
Zuckerberg envisions the Metaverse as a thriving digital commerce platform, supporting billions of dollars in transactions. Digital goods, services, and experiences will be seamlessly transferable across different spaces, providing users with a sense of continuity. Creators will have the opportunity to build businesses and reach large audiences within the Metaverse. New ownership models and entitlements will ensure users feel confident in their digital asset ownership.

Jackie Aina’s Background:
Jackie Aina is a renowned beauty creator who launched her own lifestyle brand called Forever Mood on Instagram. She started her journey in 2009 when she felt rejected and othered while shopping for makeup due to her skin tone. In response, she decided to create content and videos to show others how to make makeup work for their skin tones.

Forever Mood:
Jackie launched Forever Mood, a brand that sells candles and collaborates with major brands on makeup drops. The brand represents her relationship with her mother, as they bonded through fragrance. Forever Mood has gained significant success and received support from its customers.

Jackie’s Love for Color:
Jackie expressed her love for pastels and colors, which are reflected in her brand and personal style. She envisions using the metaverse to gather people and create various atmospheres, environments, and moods.

Community Building:
Jackie highlighted the importance of interacting with fans and engaging in conversations through comments. She believes that responding to comments humanizes the person on the other end and builds a stronger connection with her community.

New Opportunities:
Jackie sees the potential to explore innovative ways of building community and engaging with fans deeply, beyond traditional comment sections.

Virtual Pop-ups: Exclusive virtual launch parties allow fans worldwide to experience a brand’s essence through immersive, scent-inspired rooms. Digital and Physical Sales: The Metaverse enables the sale of both digital and physical products, opening new revenue streams for businesses. Monetization Methods: Creators can explore various monetization options such as custom work, tipping, subscriptions, ads, and unique metaverse-specific tools. Endless Creative Possibilities: Creators drive the Metaverse forward with their imaginative content, creating immersive experiences and unlocking its full potential.

Presence Platform and XR Development
Presence Platform: Introduces machine perception and AI capabilities for mixed reality experiences on Quest 2, enabling realistic presence. Interaction SDK: A library for modular components simplifies the addition of hand interactions to VR apps, accelerating development time. Voice SDK: Developers can integrate voice input into VR games and apps for new gameplay and navigation options. Pass-Through API: Developers can now ship mixed reality apps on the Oculus Store and App Lab, blending the virtual with the real.

Mixed Reality Experiences
Spatial Anchors and Scene Understanding: Enable persistent world-locked content and seamless mixed reality experiences. Oppi the Virtual Pet: Demonstrates the ability to place persistent virtual objects in real-world environments, opening avenues for innovative experiences.

Spark AR and Creator Enablement
AR Experiences for Connection: Spark AR focuses on AR experiences that foster connection while allowing people to stay present in their surroundings. AR Curriculum and Tools: Democratizing AR creation through educational programs and tools, empowering a global community of creators. Polar Creation Tool: Lowers the barrier to entry for novice creators, allowing them to enhance content with custom effects without prior experience. Metaverse as a Digital Economy: Positioned to be a thriving digital economy for creators of all backgrounds, offering opportunities to share creativity and capitalize on emerging possibilities.

Building a Responsible Metaverse:
Balancing the rapid pace of technological advancements with responsible development practices is crucial to ensure safety and privacy in the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg emphasizes the need for interoperability, open standards, privacy, and safety to be integrated from the start, avoiding past scenarios where regulation lagged technological progress.

Responsible Innovation Principles:
Adhering to “responsible innovation principles” is essential, starting with “never surprise people.” Transparency, clear safety controls, age guidance, and parental controls are crucial for responsible metaverse development.

External Collaboration and Research:
Engaging with experts, seeking perspectives from outside the company, and funding external research play a vital role in designing for safety, privacy, and inclusion before product development begins. Examples include Project ARIA for AR glasses and grants for research on the impact of AR, VR, and smart devices.

Building for Inclusivity and Empowerment:
Collaboration with human rights and civil rights communities is vital to ensure inclusivity and empowerment in the metaverse. Early-stage collaboration, such as through the newly announced XR programs and research fund, is key to incorporating diverse perspectives in development.

Interoperability, Openness, Safety, and Privacy as Building Blocks:
The industry should prioritize interoperability, openness, safety, and privacy as fundamental building blocks of the metaverse, alongside software and experiences. These principles must be ingrained from the beginning, setting a strong foundation for responsible metaverse development.

Project Cambria
A new high-end VR product, codenamed Project Cambria, will be released next year. It features advanced eye and facial tracking, enabling more natural social interactions. High-resolution mixed reality passthrough technology for immersive experiences. Pancake Optics reduce the profile of the headset, resulting in a slimmer design.

True Augmented Reality Glasses
Working on Project Nazare, Meta’s first full augmented reality glasses. Aiming to create glasses that are both stylish and functional, with a thickness of around five millimeters. Integration of various components such as hologram displays, projectors, and sensors into the glasses. Research and development ongoing, with the goal of achieving a truly immersive augmented reality experience.

Long-Term Research Initiatives
Meta’s research team is working on a broad range of technologies for next-generation immersive experiences. Focus on breakthroughs in areas like displays, audio, input, haptics, hand and eye tracking, mixed reality sensors, graphics, computer vision, avatars, perceptual science, AI, and more. Aiming to develop realistic and stylized avatars that create a sense of presence and connection in the metaverse. The goal is to enable photorealistic avatars that capture the nuances of facial expressions and emotions.

Avatar Customization and Fidelity:
Mark Zuckerberg emphasizes the significance of self-expression in the Metaverse and highlights the ability for users to customize their avatars through various means, including shaving, dressing up, and applying makeup. The video demonstrates advancements in hair and skin rendering, showcasing the high level of fidelity that avatars will eventually need to achieve.

Clothing Simulation:
Clothing plays a crucial role in self-expression. The video presents early research on hand-cloth interaction, demonstrating how the movement of cloth reacts realistically when touched or stretched.

Realistic Virtual Spaces:
To enable effective communication and collaboration in the Metaverse, realistic virtual spaces are necessary. A researcher is shown manipulating objects in a 3D reconstruction of an apartment, demonstrating real-time rendering of the space and moving objects.

Full-Body Avatars:
The presentation showcases progress made in creating full-body Kodak avatars, displaying a pre-recorded avatar with the ability to look around and make facial expressions. The interaction between a VR user and a realistic avatar in a reconstructed real-world space is demonstrated, providing a glimpse into future possibilities for real-time interactions.

Avatar Security:
Zuckerberg acknowledges the importance of protecting users’ avatars and discusses early research on securing avatars through authentication and identity verification.

Key Advances in Human-Computer Interaction for XR:
EMG Input: EMG input utilizes unused neuromotor pathways to translate subtle gestures into digital commands. This innovative technology enables intuitive control of AR devices without the need for visible gestures. EMG input could revolutionize how we interact with virtual content, allowing for full-speed typing and personalized controls. Collaborative AI: Contextualized AI combines EMG input with contextual information to offer proactive assistance. Real-time object recognition and eye-tracking enable AR glasses to identify nearby objects and anticipate user needs. Voice interfaces provide additional object location assistance. Intuitive Interface: The integration of EMG input and AI creates an intuitive, low-friction interface in AR. This user-centric approach puts people at the center of technology, delivering immersive experiences and an expanded creative economy.

Meta as a Metaverse Company:
Mark Zuckerberg’s Vision: Zuckerberg envisions Facebook’s evolution into a metaverse company, representing the next chapter for the internet and the company itself. The metaverse embodies the ultimate promise of technology: to bring people together, enable teleportation, and create immersive experiences. Identity and Rebranding: The company’s brand, currently synonymous with its social media apps, needs to encompass its broader vision for the future. The goal is to be seen as a metaverse company that delivers transformative experiences beyond social media. Facebook is undergoing a fundamental restructuring, with separate segments for its family of apps and future platforms. A new company brand is in development to represent this evolution and the wide range of offerings under the company’s umbrella.

Vision Unveiled:
Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s new identity, Meta, signifying the transition from Facebook-centric to Metaverse-centric. The mission remains consistent: bringing people together, but now with a new North Star guiding the development of the Metaverse.

New Name, Unchanged Apps:
Facebook’s name change reflects the company’s expanding scope beyond social media. The individual apps and their branding will remain intact, emphasizing that Meta is still a people-centered technology company.

Beyond Facebook:
Zuckerberg envisions a future where Meta’s services are accessible without the dependency on Facebook. The new Meta brand aims to represent the company’s ambitious vision for the future.

Meta’s Roots and Future:
Zuckerberg draws inspiration from the Greek word “meta,” symbolizing the continuous pursuit of advancements. The company’s journey, originating from a dorm room, has led to a family of apps that have impacted the world.

Envisioning Future Possibilities:
Zuckerberg expresses enthusiasm for exploring new horizons beyond the limitations of screens and physical boundaries. The goal is to foster a future where individuals can engage with each other, create opportunities, and experience novel concepts.

Beyond Limits, Collective Effort:
The Metaverse vision extends beyond the capabilities of any single company, requiring the collaboration of various entities. Meta acknowledges its past experiences with social issues and closed platforms, drawing lessons to shape the next chapter.

Dedication and Invitation:
Zuckerberg pledges Meta’s commitment to the Metaverse, surpassing any other company’s investment. An invitation is extended to those who share this vision to join forces and contribute to shaping a remarkable future.