Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse Explained

For 17 years now, Mark Zuckerberg has been creating and subsequently revolutionizing the world’s preeminent social media network. In that stretch of time, Facebook (FB) has gone from being a gathering place for a batch of Harvard students to a hub for nearly three billion active users across the planet.

From the company’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp to its stranglehold on online news, there’s no denying that Facebook plays a major role in the way we as a society communicate and learn.

It only makes sense that Mark Zuckerberg would try to take these two principles of Facebook (FB) — communication and learning — and attempt to implement them in an entirely new way. Thus, the Facebook metaverse was born.

But what exactly is the Facebook metaverse? How does Mark Zuckerberg envision the metaverse being used? And what is the potential impact of it on the company’s stock and the world at large?

What Is the Metaverse?

If the Facebook metaverse sounds like a term straight out of a science fiction story, it’s probably because it more or less is.

The term comes from a 1992 science fiction novel titled Snow Crash, and it’s used to encapsulate a realm where physical, virtual, and augmented realities converge.

That’s exactly what the Facebook metaverse is: an enormous, interconnected online universe where users can gather, work, collaborate, play, learn, and even make a profit. Zuckerberg calls it an embodied internet, and this is a great way to explain it: an extension of the social media platform we know and use today that goes a step beyond the “social” aspect.

In fact, the Facebook metaverse could even be seen as a step beyond the internet as we know it today, a natural progression from simply viewing content to actually being immersed in it. 

The internet can still feel like a lonely place, even when working with others on collaborative software like Google Drive or communicating with others through Zoom. The Facebook metaverse would amend this, making you feel more physically present with others over the internet than ever before. It’s all part of Mark Zuckerberg’s remarkable vision for the metaverse.

What Is Mark Zuckerberg’s Vision for the Metaverse?

Describing Facebook’s metaverse as simply a place where people can become immersed in the internet is almost too simplistic to do Mark Zuckerberg’s vision justice.

Zuckerberg’s vision of the potential implications for the Facebook metaverse go so far beyond just gathering with others in an augmented virtual reality: It’s a place where the physical and the virtual and the augmented realities come together to create a new online world, a place with its own unique economy and interoperability facilitated by the cooperation of multiple tech giants.

Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT) have already begun this collaborative process to construct the metaverse, and Zuckerberg’s vision sees plenty of others joining in this collaborative process in the months and years to come.

Beyond this, the metaverse is envisioned as a space for goods and services to be exchanged and utilized, a place for work to be done in a shared collaborative space, a world where people from all corners of the planet can “physically” gather around a virtual table with one another and have a shared experience together. It’s a revolutionary vision that Zuckerberg has, and what’s so surprising is that it’s well within reach.

The metaverse is not just an idea: It’s something Zuckerberg and Facebook are actively working to create. This is sure to have quite the impact on Facebook stock, to be sure.

What Will the Metaverse Mean for Facebook Stock?

While Facebook stock has more or less been on a dependable and constant rise since its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in May of 2012, the development and eventual release of the metaverse is likely to accelerate this increase in price per share by a significant and noticeable amount.

Currently resting at around $365 per share, Facebook stock is forecasted to rise as high as $500 a share in the next 12 months. This is especially promising when you look at where Facebook stock was just five years ago, just under $125 a share.

Through thick and thin, the company has continued to grow. This is all in spite of federal investigations, controversies surrounding the legitimacy of news shared on the site, and the platform’s potential role in the decline in an entire generation of people’s mental health.

With the eventual rollout of the metaverse, which is still in the early stages of development, retail investors and traders can depend on this company’s stock paying off in a big way (if all goes according to plan).

The scope and the scale of this project is so ambitious and so potentially beneficial to the planet as a whole, there are not many financial analysts out there who would venture as far as to say the metaverse will negatively impact Facebook stock. If all goes according to the vision, then it’s all up from here barring macro shocks.

The Bottom Line: Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Explained

When it comes down to it, the Mark Zuckerberg metaverse is the natural progression of Facebook, a social media titan that has seemingly beaten the game and is now in search of a new one to play.

While it’s a remarkable undertaking for Zuckerberg to embark on, and one that is going to require a lot of time and energy and effort not just from Facebook but also from countless other tech giants in order to be successful, the potential implications of the metaverse are too enormous to dismiss as just another wild idea from a Silicon Valley tech mogul.

Retail investors and traders who believe in Zuckerberg’s vision wouldn’t be wrong to get a piece of Facebook stock before things really start to heat up for the company.

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The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Financhill has a disclosure policy. This post may contain affiliate links or links from our sponsors.