Social media CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who changed the name of his company to pursue his metaverse dreams, is defending his company’s approach to virtual reality after Apple’s blockbuster announcement earlier this week.
On Monday, Applerevealed the Vision Pro, its first foray into what the company called “spatial computing.” The $3,500 headset will overlay apps on the surrounding environment, allowing users to interact with content and programs over a three-dimensional space.
The announcement threatens to overshadow Meta’s own virtual reality reveal: the Meta Quest 3, which the social media company unveiled last week. Meta’s headset is priced at a more affordable $500, and, like the Vision Pro, also features “mixed reality” (where images are displayed over a real-world environment).
At an all-hands meeting on Thursday, Zuckerberg said that Apple’s reveal “really shows the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this,” reports The Verge. Meta’s vision for its virtual reality offerings is “fundamentally social,” he said, noting that his company’s demonstration showed “people interacting in new ways and feeling closer.”
Yet “every demo that [Apple] showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself,” Zuckerberg said. “That could be the vision of the future of computing, but, like, it’s not the one that I want.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Metaverse
Meta’s CEO was one of the loudest proponents of the “metaverse,” or the idea that the real and digital worlds will become increasingly connected through new technologies like virtual reality. Zuckerberg even changed the company’s name from Facebook to Meta Platforms in late 2021.
Yet the company’s metaverse efforts haven’t caught fire. Horizon Worlds, the company’s flagship virtual world, had fewer than 200,000 monthly active users by October 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In April, Meta reported that the Reality Labs unit, which develops its metaverse efforts including virtual reality, lost $3.99 billion in the most recent quarter. The company warned the division was likely to lose even more money this year.
Zuckerberg referred on Thursday to his company’s earlier investment in virtual reality, noting that Apple’s headset did not feature any developments that Meta’s teams “haven’t already explored and thought of.”
Virtual reality is not the only area where Meta’s earlier efforts have risked getting leapfrogged by a competitor. The social media company has invested billions in new A.I. Technologies, but has hesitated to release them for broader use for fear of disseminating untrue information, according to the New York Times. Yet the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has allowed other tech companies, like Microsoft and Alphabet, to take over the conversation in A.I.
Embarrassingly, Meta was not invited to a White House discussion on A.I. Earlier this year, with an administration spokesperson saying at the time that it wanted to focus “on companies currently leading in the space.”
Meta announced a few generative A.I. Tools in its all-hands meeting on Thursday, including chatbots for WhatsApp and Messenger, and photo-editing tools for Instagram, according to Bloomberg.
The social media giant is in the midst of what its CEO calls a “year of efficiency,” a cost-cutting initiative. The company has cut 21,000 jobs since last November.
On the offensive
Yet in one area, Meta is going on the offensive against a competitor.
Also on Thursday, the company revealed to employees that it was working on a competitor to Twitter, reports The Verge. The competing social media company is beset by content moderation controversies under new owner Elon Musk.
Some celebrities are already interested in the app, internally called Project 92, said Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, during the all-hands meeting. “We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run,” he said.