New Delhi: Social networking giant Facebook, which adopted a new moniker Meta in late October (Meta), based on sci-fi term metaverse, is at the risk of missing the point of metaverse if it is not able to permit digital ownership, a new report says.
According to a report by news agency Reuters, metaverse participants do not think the social media giant is ready to embrace the spirit driving creativity and profit in the space.
"What Facebook is doing with meta...is a 'fake metaverse,' unless they actually have a real description as to how we can truly own it," Yat Siu, chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, an investor in and builder of metaverse platforms, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The metaverse refers to an array of shared spaces accessed via the internet. Some use augmented reality, via smart glasses, though current platforms often look more like the inside of a video game than real life.
Meanwhile, the battle in the metaverse space is heating up as tech behemoths have started to explore its possibilities. Last month, after Facebook, Microsoft also said it was ready to launch its own version where its users can collaborate and interact in 3D digital avatars. At the annual Ignite 2021 conference, Microsoft announced Mesh for its video conferencing platform Teams that will allow users to interact in collaborative and shared holographic experiences.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, while announcing the name change, had said they now want to be known as a metaverse company, and that the existing name could not "possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future".