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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting point. The fact that they need 10k people to work on this makes them more like a government putting on a make work project than a company doing R&D. They'd be better off funding 1000 10-person startups working in VR, or just buying or copying one when / if it gets traction.

Related, I can see some appeal of getting to work at a small group doing development in a new area. It's got to be much harder to attract talent who know they are joining as a cog in a 10,000 person centrally planned effort

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Well in the 90s when the web was new, centralized players like AOL and Compuserve were where the users found an on-ramp to the Internet. I think of Facebook as the AOL of today's web, and they want to be the AOL of tomorrow's VR/AR mixed media metaverse. But hopefully the masses of users will grow past this next "AOL" and find their way to the VR/XR decentralized Web. This is yet to be determined...

Yah that has been my thinking on this too. The Metaverse is in its dialup modem stage of the comparison and things can still take a number of directions not all of which favor Facebook by a long shot. They are the ones investing heavily today (FBRL is already 10K people [1]) and that brings legitimacy to all of XR as more than just a gaming niche subculture. But, as any comment thread on this topic clearly shows, FB has sustained reputational damage that is not easy to overcome without some internal soul searching business model pivot. If they plan thier Metaverse as an Adtech engine extension of their existing business, then they can be AOL/Netscape - big names at the outset but not built to last long in the new space. Given the choice, people want some Digital Dignity/Data Sovereignty and other players will find a way to make it happen if FB won't.

[1] https://uploadvr.com/facebook-employees-2021/

What's most wild about this is that they're doing this big of a hiring push for a new offering, in just one region of the world.

It's obvious Facebook sees the metaverse as the next big platform, and they want to own it the way Apple and Google own mobile today.

Now that I think about if, maybe this is just about buying some goodwill in europe by creating jobs?

Seems like a likely reason why they’re doing this, wasn’t the whistleblower supposed to testify in Europe? Convenient timing. They’re likely trying to bribe the EU here with the promise of jobs.

Nah, it's probably that now that they are allowing remote for almost all jobs, they now have a much bigger space for recruitment (lots of people in Europe don't want to move to London or Dublin).

> It's obvious Facebook sees the metaverse as the next big platform

I could see it- with business conferences and business travel, remote work etc. But I'd rather this go to Skype for business or zoom or linkedin etc or basically anyone else than Facebook.

Roblox could win this, they just need to double down.

They easily could, they just need to ship Roblox VR on the Oculus Quest and the upcoming Apple headset.

I'm not sure FB will let them ship that.. there might be enough demand though to force them. But it will drive Oculus demand thru the roof.. I'd buy at least 3.

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