Facebook to rebrand as a metaverse company. What is that? | CBC Radio
With news that Facebook Inc. is expected to rebrand as a metaverse company, the not-so-novel term has made its way into headlines around the world. Here’s what it means, and how companies are hoping it will hook users.
9:12Facebook to rebrand as a metaverse company. What is that?
With reports that Facebook Inc. is expected to rebrand as a metaverse company, the not-so-novel term has made its way into headlines around the world.
Technology news website The Verge reported Tuesday that the company, known for its social network and messaging platforms, will announce a new company name to better reflect its ambitions to build the metaverse.
The move comes as the California firm faces scrutiny from lawmakers over its platforms’ negative effects on users, spread of misinformation, and monopolistic tendencies.
“Facebook has plenty of reasons to want us to look at something else,” said Beth Coleman, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Communications, Culture, Information and Technology.
But beyond Facebook’s legal challenges, experts say the metaverse could be the next frontier of the social web where companies create new platforms to hook users. Like many modern technologies, the idea has roots in science fiction. Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash first mentioned the metaverse in 1992, describing it as a shared, virtual space where users can interact.
It isn’t a platform or experience owned by one single company. While it’s often used to describe digital worlds in which users can communicate, play and do business with others, the idea is much broader.
“It’s this kind of catch-all term for anything that seems like it’s something that comes after the mobile internet, which was the thing that came after the desktop internet,” said Adi Robertson, senior reporter for The Verge.
Ramona Pringle, an associate professor at the Ryerson University RTA School of Media, says it’s an idea decades in the making. Virtual spaces inhabited by digital avatars — popularized by the virtual world of Second Life in the 2000s — promised to “take over our lives” long before social networks had users glued to their phones all day long.
The metaverse as it’s now described would be an evolution from that original idea combined with social networking as we know it today, she says.
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology is expected to a driving force for the virtual worlds by creating immersive experiences for users, and could further blur the lines between real and digital life.
WATCH | Tech reporter says Facebook is on the verge of a massive rebrand:
The Verge’s senior reporter Alex Heath tells Power & Politics the social media giant is set to undergo a series of changes — including a new company name. 5:31 Facebook’s vision of the metaverse isn’t too far off from Stephenson’s sci-fi concept.
The company describes it as a “set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”
But the metaverse will go beyond providing space to chat with new and old avatar-based friends. In the video game worlds of Roblox and Fortnite, early entrants to the metaverse popular among younger players, pop stars have held live concerts and digital goods are traded for in-game currency, for example.
“There’s this desire to be more immersive and … an active participant in these virtual experiences because we realize that we’re just going to have to spend a lot more time there and we’re OK with that,” said Annie Zhang, host of the podcast Hello Metaverse and a senior product designer at Roblox. Zhang predicts a future with economies that transcend the real world — an idea that began years ago in Second Life.
She says content creators could use virtual platforms to sell and release new music or videos, freeing some from the constraints of algorithms they say devalue their work.
Others may turn to virtual worlds to buy and sell “land” or other goods using cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NTF), said Zhang. That’s already happening in Decentraland, a platform that uses the Ethereum blockchain. “It’s a product of people not feeling like one they have control or an understanding of systems that they have to participate in,” she said, noting concerns that younger generations will struggle to own property in the real world as one example.
Currently, platforms like Roblox and Fortnite operate as walled gardens, run by the companies that own them. Some imagine a future within the metaverse where users could wander between worlds with a single avatar, carrying goods they’ve created or own from one platform to another.
Interest in building the metaverse is likely driven by financial goals and collecting user data for marketing, Pringle says. She expects companies will advertise on metaverse platforms, bringing in revenue for the companies that host them.
That could make the metaverse “a very compelling, very sticky and very immersive medium for ads” with users “still being targeted by people who want to sell us either products or ideologies,” Pringle said.
A shift toward the metaverse also serves as a rebuke of social media. For users unhappy about how social networks are “splintering society” or impacting users’ mental health, companies are promoting their investments into new kinds of experiences as a way forward, Pringle said.
Though Facebook’s push into the metaverse comes at the same time it’s under fire, Coleman notes that the company has been laying the groundwork for years.
Facebook purchased Oculus, a startup that builds VR headsets, back in 2014.
After years of what she calls “mediocre” virtual worlds built by various companies, Coleman says the success of the metaverse will ultimately depend on what company releases the “killer app” that users flock to. Given Facebook Inc.’s success connecting people online — it boasts more than 2.85 billion monthly users on Facebook alone — it could be the company to do just that, she adds.
“If you were going to bet on a horse in terms of who is going to make this important to not just a population, but globally, you’d say that Facebook has a pretty damn good track record.”
Written by Jason Vermes with files from Sameer Chhabra and Reuters.
What is the metaverse?
Tech reporter says Facebook is on the verge of a massive rebrand
What will users do there?
Why is Facebook getting in on this?
Every week over 1 billion people connect with businesses on our messaging apps. Many of these conversations are made possible by the thousands of developers who build innovative and engaging experiences on Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Since opening access to our Llama family of large language models, we’ve seen lots of momentum and innovation with more than 30 million downloads to date. As our messaging services continue to evolve, we believe the technology from Llama and other generative AI models have the potential to enhance business messaging through more natural, conversational experiences.
At Connect Meta announced that developers will be able to build third-party AIs – a term we use to refer to our generative AI-powered assistants – for our messaging services.
We’re making it easy for any developer to get started, so we’re simplifying the developer onboarding process and providing access to APIs for AIs that make it possible to build new conversational experiences within our messaging apps.
All developers will be able to access the new onboarding experience and features on Messenger in the coming weeks. For WhatsApp, we’ll be opening a Beta program in November – if you’re interested in participating please sign up to the waitlist here to learn more.
We’ll keep everyone updated as we make these tools available to more developers later this year. We look forward to your feedback and seeing what you create.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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