Facebook has announced a lot of developments related to the metaverse. Now it has something big. The social media giant has announced that it is planning to hire around 10,000 people. These new hires would dedicatedly work to build metaverse – a digital world. The company said that these people will be hired in the European Union over the next five years. It said that the hiring is required to give a much-needed push to the metaverse. Facebook said that it would hire high-skilled engineers across all member states of the European Union. For the moment, the main focus will focus on hiring engineers in Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, and Ireland.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs, and Javier Olivan, vice president of central products said that Europe is extremely important for the company. “Europe has been a big part of success. There are thousands of employees in the European Union. Also, millions of businesses are using our apps and tools every day. Facebook wants to continue this and become part of the wider economy,” they said in a blog post. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already shared his vision for a metaverse.
“As we move ahead with our plans to make metaverse a reality, having highly specialized engineers becomes our top priority. We are looking forward to working with the governments across the European Union to find suitable candidates and the right market to take our plans forward. We are looking forwards to our recruitment drive across the region,” Clegg and Olivan said. Metaverse is a term that has been coined to describe a digital world that will allow multiple people to interact with each other virtually in a 3D environment. This virtual world would be accessible to millions of people who would be able to do a lot of stuff including buying virtual clothing and other digital assets by paying with cryptocurrencies.
Facebook has already released a work collaboration app that is considered to be its first step into the metaverse. The app allows people to hold meetings in virtual reality. Top executives of the company have been touting the metaverse as the next big revolution. Not only Facebook but there are also several other tech companies that are investing to develop their own versions of the metaverse. Some of the big names are Microsoft, Epic Games, and Roblox. Most importantly, Epic Games has already raised USD 1 billion for investors to take forward its plan of building metaverse.
Facebook recently announced that it would be investing USD 50 million in order to fund global research to develop products for the metaverse. For this, it would work in partnership with civil rights groups, non-profit organizations, universities, and also governments. Despite Facebook actively working on it, the company has clarified that it may take anything around 10 to 15 years in order to ‘fully realize’ many of the products. For the uninitiated, the term metaverse was first coined by writer Neal Town Stephenson. He used this term in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. The term started doing recently as more and more companies started working on it.
However, the development comes a time when the social media giant is going through turbulent times. Facebook is facing a series of investigations following media reports that the Instagram app has a negative impact on teenagers. Earlier this month, whistleblower Frances Haugen – who has accused the top leadership of Facebook of putting ‘astronomical profits before people’ – testified at a US congressional hearing. However, Zuckerberg has categorically denied these claims.
Jeffrey is acting editor in chief of AmazingNews24 with over seven years of experience in the field of online news under his belt. Jeffrey has worked with multiple media houses and is currently leading a team of journalists, sub-editors and writers through his entrepreneurial endeavours.