[FREE] An Interview with Mark Zuckerberg about the Metaverse

MZ: I think at the end of the day, there’s going to be commerce, and I think commerce and ads are kind of closely related, because if there’s not any commerce, then there’s not much for people to advertise for. I think the first job that we need — well, I guess the first job is getting the foundational technology to work. Then after that, our next ... See more

How does Facebook make money in this world? I mean, is there an app store fee? You’re proposing to spend over time, hundreds of billions of dollars, where does that return on investment come from?

The third thing that I’d say is, I think it’s really important that the metaverse works for people, not just as consumers, but as creators, and that people economically have a stake in it as well. This is one of the lessons that I’ve taken away from the last five years of some of the issues that we’ve struggled with as well, is that it’s not enough... See more

My grounding on a lot of this stuff philosophically is that human connection and relationships are one of the most important things in our lives. I kind of think that our society systematically undervalues that. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up and my parents kind of told me, “Okay, go do your homework and then you can play with yo... See more

I care about this existing, not just virtual and augmented reality existing, but it getting built out in a way that really advances the state of human connection and enables people to be able to interact in a different way. That’s sort of what I’ve dedicated my life’s work to. I’m not sure, I don’t know that if we weren’t investing so much in this,... See more

MZ: Yeah, that’s what we tried to lay out in the film. And you’re right, I think it’s not just one challenge. I think that there’s aspects of the technology that need to get built that just don’t exist today. We just can’t build yet the augmented reality glasses in the form factor that we want, and that’s still at least a few years away, that’s jus... See more

I think the big advantage that mobile had is the use case of carrying a phone with you was already present, and so the smartphone was just replacing a mobile phone, and it made the go-to-market much easier, whereas this feels like it’s something fundamentally new where we have to teach people new ways to work and operate and convince them why the o... See more

MZ: I think that it all kind of fits together as one platform, but I’ve been more optimistic about virtual reality than most other people have. I think in the tech industry, there’s been this view that VR is sort of an entrée to this, but really augmented reality is going to be the big thing. I’ve always been a little more balanced on that, where I... See more

As I’m thinking through this, if there is this sort of bifurcation, is it possible that VR actually does end up becoming more important and more meaningful in this future then AR, where AR is a way to keep in touch with the virtual world when you’re out and about, but actually you’re going to want to spend more and more time actually fully immersed... See more