Horizon Workrooms is a virtual collaboration space just announced from Facebook that connects both VR and video chat users and their desktops into a virtual room. The long-awaited Facebook Hozion social metaverse app has yet to launch which makes me wonder if Facebook has now realised that business collaboration is going to be a main driver for VR and AR hardware purchases after gaming.
At Extreme Digital Ventures we got very excited about XR collaboration a few years back and put our collective toe in the water with a startup called SpaceTime XR. It seems now we were right as there are many similar platforms to be found XR Collaboration Resource Guide but Facebook does have a big advantage in this market so it's easy to see why Mark Zuckerberg got so excited when he first saw the Oculus Rift and proceeded to buy the company for a cool $2 Billion US.
The concept of the Metaverse is a future iteration of the internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe. If you've seen the movie Ready Player One or read the book, which I preferred then you will understand the concept. Zuckerberg recently announced his plans to pivot Facebook from a social media company to a metaverse company in the coming years. If you have already bought a Oculus Quest VR headset then you are already on this road and to my mind it's still more about fun than work but we'll soon see.