The New Metaverse Gold Rush

The company formerly known as Facebook has bet big on the metaverse. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hyped the already popular term in October, when he changed the company’s name to Meta and led viewers through its dizzying vision of the future. But “the metaverse” is a much bigger and more confusing idea. 

From its origins in science fiction, it’s become a catchall for anything that mixes people’s physical and virtual lives. That includes virtual and augmented reality headsets; 3D virtual worlds like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft; and decentralized Web3 services including cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Lots of “metaverse” proponents don’t agree on a single definition for the word or on how much people are already living in it. While Meta is making big investments, other companies have already built metaverse-style platforms some, like Second Life developer Linden Lab, years before Facebook even existed. Here, we delve into the ambiguities of 2021’s most omnipresent tech buzzword and why it might not look like any of these companies have predicted.

Facebook And Ray-ban’s Smart Glasses Release

Facebook and Ray-Ban are set to announce their smart glasses collaboration later today, September 9th, and right on cue Evan “Evleaks” Blass has posted a ton of alleged photos of the product lineup. The glasses are called Ray-Ban Stories, and other than the box it doesn’t look like Facebook branding appears anywhere on the product. Evleaks’ images include three distinct frame styles Wayfarer, Round, and Meteor and they all look pretty close to the classic Ray-Ban designs.

The difference, of course, is the presence of two cameras by the hinges on either side. There’s also a button along the top of the right temple, which could potentially be used to operate the cameras. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously said of the glasses that they “have [Ray-Ban’s] iconic form factor, and they let you do some pretty neat things.” They don’t have screens for AR functionality, however, so we’re still in the dark about what those things might be. Zuckerberg said that the product is part of the company’s “journey towards full augmented reality glasses in the future,” and more advanced AR glasses are also in the works. For now, these pictures don’t do much to show how or whether Facebook has leapt beyond the capabilities of even Snap’s early Spectacles other than by making glasses that look like regular Ray-Bans, of course. We’ll hopefully have the answer to that question later today.