马克·扎克伯格想把 Facebook 变成一家“元节公司”这意味着什么？

Mark Zuckerberg wants to reinvent Facebook. He has been telling analysts and journalists that he wants the company to lead the way to a completely different internet. He said:马克·扎克伯格想要重塑 Facebook。 他一直告诉分析师和记者，他希望公司引领通往完全不同的互联网之路。 他说：

扎克伯格说：在接下来的几年里，我预计人们将从主要将我们视为一家社交媒体公司转变为将我们视为一家 metaverse 公司……在许多方面，metaverse 是社交技术的终极表达。

So what does the Facebook chief executive mean by “metaverse company”? And what will the company look like if and when it gets there?那么，Facebook 首席执行官所说的“元界公司”是什么意思呢？ 如果目标实现，公司会是什么样子？

Where it comes from它来自哪里？

The term “metaverse” is used to describe the vision whereby the internet will evolve into a virtual world. The idea was first conceptualised in 1992 by the American novelist Neal Stephenson in his science fiction classic, Snow Crash. It foresees the internet as a 3D virtual living space, where inpiduals dip in and out, interacting with one another in real time.“元宇宙”一词用于描述互联网将演变为虚拟世界的愿景。 1992 年，美国小说家尼尔·斯蒂芬森 (Neal Stephenson) 在他的科幻经典小说《雪崩》(Snow Crash) 中首次提出了这个想法。 它将互联网视为一个 3D 虚拟生活空间，个人可以在其中进进出出，彼此实时互动。

Many in Silicon Valley still view the metaverse as the future. For example, Google is heavily invested in augmented reality (AR), which is where you use technology to look at the real world but with digital 3D objects layered on top. And rumours swirl that Apple is building products like glasses for experiencing virtual spaces.硅谷的许多人仍然将元宇宙视为未来。 例如，谷歌在增强现实 (AR) 方面投入了大量资金，在增强现实 (AR) 中，您可以使用技术来观察现实世界，但数字 3D 对象位于顶部。 并且有传言称，苹果正在开发诸如用于体验虚拟空间的眼镜之类的产品。

But Facebook appears the most committed of all to this new vision. In his quest to turn Facebook into a metaverse company, Zuckerberg is seeking to build a system where people move between virtual reality (VR), AR and even 2D devices, using realistic avatars of themselves where appropriate. Here they will work, socialise, share things and have other experiences, while still probably using the internet for some tasks such as searches which are similar to how we use it now.但 Facebook 似乎是最致力于这一新愿景的人。 为了将 Facebook 变成一家元宇宙公司，扎克伯格正在寻求建立一个系统，让人们在虚拟现实 (VR)、AR 甚至 2D 设备之间移动，并在适当的情况下使用他们自己的真实化身。 在这里，他们将工作、社交、分享事物并获得其他体验，同时可能仍会使用互联网执行某些任务，例如与我们现在使用互联网的方式类似的搜索。

欢迎来到2030年

Owning not only the Facebook platform but also WhatsApp, Instagram and VR headset maker Oculus gives Zuckerberg a big head start in making this a reality. Collectively, these brands give Facebook an unbeatable number of customer relationships, and all the important knowledge for creating a desirable virtual world: how people behave online, their personalities, likes and dislikes, gait, eye movement and even emotional states.不仅拥有 Facebook 平台，还拥有 WhatsApp、Instagram 和 VR 耳机制造商 Oculus，这让扎克伯格在实现这一目标方面取得了巨大的领先优势。 总的来说，这些品牌为 Facebook 提供了无与伦比的客户关系数量，以及创建理想虚拟世界的所有重要知识：人们在网上的行为方式、他们的个性、好恶、步态、眼球运动甚至情绪状态。

To help build the metaverse, Facebook’s engineers will have to make a success of immersive realism. Imagine a computer game with 2.9 billion avatars and the artificial intelligence that harvests all known information on them. The company has created a pision called Reality Labs, whose researchers are working on creating the defining quality of the metaverse, namely “presence” – the feeling of being in a space with others. Unsurprisingly, this team is heavily staffed by people with gaming backgrounds.为了帮助构建元宇宙，Facebook 的工程师必须在沉浸式现实主义方面取得成功。 想象一下有 29 亿个头像的电脑游戏，以及收集所有已知信息的人工智能。 该公司创建了一个名为 Reality Labs 的部门，其研究人员正致力于创造元宇宙的定义品质，即“存在感”——与他人共处一室的感觉。 不出所料，这个团队的人员配备很多具有游戏背景的人。

Facebook is also ploughing money into software to enable activities like “teleporting” into another place like an office so that it seems as if you are really there, as well as physical kit like AR glasses and more advanced VR headsets.Facebook 还在软件上投入资金，以实现诸如“传送”到另一个地方（如办公室）这样的活动，让您仿佛真的在那里，以及诸如 AR 眼镜和更先进的 VR 耳机之类的物理套件。

Metaverse necessities元界必需品

Zuckerberg has said that he expects Facebook to have made this transition within the next five years, and for devices like headsets and AR glasses to be ready for heavy daily mainstream use by the end of the decade.扎克伯格曾表示，他预计 Facebook 将在未来五年内实现这一转变，并在 10 年末为头显和 AR 眼镜等设备做好日常主流使用的准备。

To succeed, Facebook is going to have to make its VR offering interoperable with metaverse systems being created by other companies online. It is also going to have to be scaleable, so that it can cope seamlessly with more and more people becoming part of it. Those are costly propositions, but integrating the technology makes sense.为了取得成功，Facebook 将不得不使其 VR 产品与其他公司在线创建的元节系统互操作。 它还必须具有可扩展性，以便能够无缝应对越来越多的人加入其中。 这些都是代价高昂的提议，但整合技术是有道理的。

Facebook has already been the subject of an antitrust case for anti-competitive practices. The lawsuit failed, but the US is still working on regulations that could force Facebook and other tech giants to scale back. Clearly the company has many enemies – not least from the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which users’ data was harvested without their consent, and what it said about how Facebook has handled privacy.Facebook 已经成为反竞争行为的反垄断案件的主题。 诉讼失败了，但美国仍在制定可能迫使 Facebook 和其他科技巨头缩减规模的法规。 显然，该公司有许多敌人——尤其是剑桥分析公司的丑闻，其中未经用户同意就收集了用户的数据，以及它对 Facebook 如何处理隐私的说法。

Creating a metaverse product that is fully interoperable with everything else in the metaverse will not only potentially reassure some about Facebook’s intentions, it will also make it harder for them to break it up in future. Once it is in place, competitors will find it extremely expensive to create rival systems. Facebook’s metaverse system will also be more valuable the more people that are part of the network. This is based on the idea of network effects, which is what built Facebook and America’s other online giants into trillion-dollar companies in the first place.创建一个与 Metaverse 中的所有其他内容完全可互操作的 Metaverse 产品不仅可以潜在地让某些人对 Facebook 的意图感到放心，而且还会使他们将来更难将其拆分。 一旦到位，竞争对手会发现创建竞争对手的系统非常昂贵。 Facebook 的元节系统也将随着网络中更多人的加入而变得更有价值。 这是基于网络效应的想法，正是网络效应最初将 Facebook 和美国其他在线巨头打造成了价值数万亿美元的公司。

Changing the business model is not a light decision. With many of its customers sitting at home for more than a year due to COVID, Facebook has been firing on all cylinders. It has just reported a 57% increase in second-quarter advertising sales, a 7% rise in monthly active users (that’s 170 million more of them), and a near-doubling in net income to US$10.4 billion (£7.4 billion). As at the end of June, the company was sitting on US$64 billion of cash.改变商业模式不是一个轻松的决定。 由于 COVID 的影响，许多客户在家中坐了一年多，Facebook 一直在全力以赴。 该公司刚刚报告称，第二季度广告销售额增长了 57%，月活跃用户增长了 7%（即增加了 1.7 亿），净收入几乎翻了一番，达到 104 亿美元（74 亿英镑）。 截至 6 月底，该公司坐拥 640 亿美元现金。

喜欢 = 赚钱。

At present, advertising dominates the Facebook social-networking business model, but the move to becoming a metaverse company raises the possibility of new revenue sources. Currently users share thoughts, pictures, posts, activities, events and interests in a two-dimensional way without paying for it (at least not in the traditional sense).目前，广告在 Facebook 社交网络商业模式中占主导地位，但成为元节公司的举动增加了新收入来源的可能性。 目前用户以二维方式分享想法、图片、帖子、活动、事件和兴趣，无需付费（至少不是传统意义上的）。

But users might be willing to pay for the enhanced interactivity that will be available in the metaverse, perhaps to enter certain private areas or to do certain things, like teleporting for more than a few minutes at a time or whatever. Zuckerberg has said he believes Facebook will make money from the sale of certain virtual goods and experiences. Will we be paying for the most stylish avatar clothes in future, for example? Or to see the latest movie in a virtual cinema?但是用户可能愿意为 Metaverse 中可用的增强交互性付费，也许是为了进入某些私人区域或做某些事情，例如一次传送超过几分钟或其他什么。 扎克伯格曾表示，他相信 Facebook 将通过销售某些虚拟商品和体验来赚钱。 例如，我们将来会为最时尚的化身服装买单吗？ 或者在虚拟电影院看最新电影？

And in this new world we will probably be interacting with one another even more than we do already. This points to even more revenue opportunities for the gatekeeper.在这个新世界中，我们彼此之间的互动可能比现在更多。 这为“看门人”提供了更多的收入机会。

In summary, creating a virtual world for users to interact with their friends and family is not just a fancy vision, it is a commercial necessity. Mark Zuckerberg created the first social media platform that became a global standard. Now, in virtual reality, he is trying to pull off the same trick again.综上所述，为用户创造一个与朋友和家人互动的虚拟世界不仅仅是一种幻想，而是一种商业需求。 马克·扎克伯格创建了第一个成为全球标准的社交媒体平台。 现在，在虚拟现实中，他正试图再次实现同样的技巧。