News And Commentary: Questions Raised About Horizon Following Zuckerburg's Comments, Announcement of Creator Fees

 

It's no secret that many Second Life users roll their eyes at Linden Lab a lot. But can anyone else do a better job at developing a virtual world. The biggest company gicing it a try is Facebook/Meta, with it's Horizons. This virtual world has already been ridiculed for having avatars with nothing below the waist. But certain comments by the company founder plus how much of a cut it plans to take from content creators is making it look worse.

Read more in Other Grinds, MMOs, and Games.

Of Facebook The Corporation Changing It's Name

 
On October 28, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook the corporation, announced it was changing it's name to "Meta."

"We're now looking at and reporting on our business as two different segments, one for our family of apps, and one for our work on future platforms. And as part of this, it is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do, to reflect who we are and what we hope to build."

Besides having several social medias under it, including What'sApp, Instagram, and Facebook, Zuckerberg has plans to build the "Metaverse." This would be a huge virtual world, “We believe the metaverse will be the successor of the mobile internet. We’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.”

The move comes after the company has faced a string of bad publicity from it's platforms going down for hours twice in one week to accusations it ignored findings that it's products were not good for the mental health of teenagers and that it wasn't doing enough to stop the spread of disinformation. So naturally there are criticisms that the move is to distract people from the incidents. There were also charges that the company planed to expand to the point of hiring tens of thousands of workers while ignoring it's problems "just goes to show how out of touch Facebook is with real people.” And of course came concerns that Facebook had it's sights on new territory to monopolize and become even more powerful.

Besides criticism, the move was also mocked on social media. "I meta girl in high school," joked one man. In Israel there were snickers as the term "meta" means "dead" in Hebrew.  One Reuters writer reminded that a few years ago Google's corporation changed it's name to Alphabet, but people still call both the search engine and it's company Google.

Finally there was one detail pointed out by Daniel Voyager. The term "Second Life" was trending on Twitter searches "Probably for the first time." He reasoned that Zuckerberg's move was drawing comparisons to the virtual world that was already around, and expressed hope that the extra attention would result in a few more people becoming residents.

It's hard to say how successful Facebook's effort into virtual reality will be. Two years ago, they announced their upcoming virtual world "Horizons," and the platform has yet to fully open. It was also joked about as the avatars were legless, people going about as floating in the air with nothing showing below the waist.

Sources, BBC, CNN, Reuters, ZDnet, The Guardian, Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Petition to Facebook to Allow Avatar Names

If you're a user of Facebook in addition to being a user of Second Life, you're most likely aware of it's policy telling users to use real-life names only for their accounts. Those who don't face the threat of having their accounts deleted. It's been stated by some that sometimes including a real-life picture of oneself on the page may be enough to get the staff to look the other way, and often people get a warning to change the name before the account is taken down. But still, for those whom are known online only by pen names and other pseudonyms, this rule is downright irritating.

Recently on the petition website change.org, someone calling herself Frijolita Avalira started a petition to Facebook's owner Mark Zuckerburg to allow Second Life users to use their account names without worry of deletions, "As you well know Mark Zuckerberg, your team continuously shuts down our Facebook pages, because we don't put our real life information. As far as that goes, it's a virtual world and these people don't need to know our real life names & addresses & phone numbers etc."

Frijolita brought up two reasons as to why Zuckerberg should change his policy. One was that there was already an exception to the "real names only" policy as drag queens could now make account pages under their stage names. Also, a Second Life designer was now making real life designs for live models in fashion shows. "There is a whole world of designers who use Second life as their tool of business, and Facebook to advertise to the Second life consumers. If Linden Labs can recognize linden currency with a world currency value , then we should be recognized as using our Second Life names as our 'Stage names.' "

As of the writing of this article, over 730 people had signed the petition. A thousand are needed before it's send to Zuckerberg. What happens next, time will tell.

To read the petition in full: (click here).

Sources: change.org, The Guardian, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Facebook Buys Oculus Rift for Two Billion Dollars (Main Article)

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Tuesday, it was announced that Facebook had purchased Oculus Rift for two billion US dollars. “Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” stated Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”

The announcement from Facebook stated the deal was for about $400 million in cash and about 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock valued at 1.6 billion US dollars. It was also stated "The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones."

The news of Facebook's latest acquisition, a month after they had bought the messenger platform WhatsApp for $19 Billion, came just after it was announced that 60,000 Oculus Rift units had been sold in it's first year. Hamlet Au of New World Notes thought this news, while impressive on it's own, also suggested a greater potential demand for virtual reality headsets. As the units had sold for $350 US dollars, "it's a very solid data point suggesting there is a mass market for a cheaper consumer model." Facebook's announcement claimed the figures were more than 75,000 units.

Early on, Linden Lab showed interest in the virtual reality headset, enough to start working on integrating it with Second Life in an "unofficial capacity." Hamlet Au then called the move then an "enormous gamble," but one it should take. Now, with Oculus Rift's future being a mass market one, Hamlet felt the Lab should invest more than ever.

Facebook also has some former Lindens on it's staff.  Cory Ondrejka. Linden Lab's co-founder is the head of Facebook's mobile division. Jim Purbrick, another Facebook worker who once worked at the Lab, posted, "Apparently I work at a virtual worlds company again."

Reaction appears to be mainly positive, people anticipating Facebook's large coffers able to generously fund research and development. But there have been some complaints, notably about concerns about privacy and datamining. On Oculus Rift's Kickstarter page, many posted complaints about the move: "I hate to see Oculus join facebook. Facebook is something I hate from the bottom of my heart (never joined it) .. the news totally ruined my day and I'm thinking of canceling my pre-order." The BBC reported that the creator of Minecraft, Markus  Persson, creator of popular online game Minecraft, had cancelled a deal with Oculusafter hearing the news, "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. ... I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."

So why did Facebook buy up Oculus Rift? The social media  giant has been buying up a number of acquisitions. So perhaps it's mainly for another source of revenue. But there may be other reasons. Perhaps Mark Zuckerburg is looking to catch the next tech wave. Perhaps Facebook is trying to appeal to younger users, which have been leaving as more older people sign up. Or perhaps it is, as one man in a CNN article put it, "to hedge against the day that the era of the social network as we know it becomes totally played out?"

This is clearly big news for virtual reality and virtual worlds. The money behind the multi-billion dollar company means promises for more and faster developments. But what will be the catch?

Sources: BBC, CNN Money, CNN, Facebook , New World Notes,
Image Credit: Robyn Beck/CNN 

Bixyl Shuftan

Facebook Buys Oculus Rift for Two Billion Dollars

On Tuesday, it was announced that Facebook had purchased Oculus Rift for two billion US dollars.

Stay tuned for more details.

Sources: BBC, CNN Money, CNN  
Image Credit: Robyn Beck/CNN 

Is Facebook Deleting Second Life Users? Not Many

Last week, some Second Life users of Facebook were worried when there were whispers going around about accounts of Second Life users being deleted. While there seems to be some truth to this, the number seems relatively small. Of the fans of the Second Life Newser page, the number of "Likes" went down by about ten, or about 2 percent of the total.

The issue came up before two years ago when more residents expressed alarm over what to some seemed like a purge of Facebook users using their Second Life names. The issues are much the same now as then: Second Life users either insisting on Internet anonymity or posting under their SL names because that's what they were known as online vs Facebook being *the* social site on the Internet and having an inconsistently enforced policy that people use their "real names," even if everything the user posts about was done under a virtual identity.

Much of the responses are the same now as then, from "just change the name," to accusations of bait and switch. Hamlet Au of New World Notes recommended instead of using account names as Facebook names, create a page for the Second Life account name. He also suggested since Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka has become one of Facebook's top engineers and "brought over about had a oxen other Linden engineers to the Facebook team, … any … attention Second Life gets from Facebook's higher ups is more likely to be positive than negative." Facebook itself insists they do not go looking for people to delete, but that most accounts that are taken offline are from complaints by other users.

For yours truly, most of what I post is about Second Life, very little about real life activities, and so my name on the billion member social site remains what it is. It's simpler that way. Also, the number of fans on the Newser page has been growing again. So it appears the deletions are over, for now.



On another note, Facebook recently made International News. A Khalil Shreateh tried to alert them about a weak spot in their security. But he was ignored. His response, using the exploit to post on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's page about the weakness. Naturally, the response came within minutes.

Although there is a million US dollar reward for pointing out vulnerabilities, Facebook refuses to pay Shreateh. The official reason is that he violated the TOS. But as Shreateh is a Palestinian, perhaps Zuckerberg didn't want to appear to be sending money to the antagonists of Israel, America's best friend in the Middle East. Since then however, Shreateh has reportedly gotten a number of IT job offers, plus a sum of money raised by supporters in an effort organized by cybersecurity company BeyondTrust.



Sources: New World Notes, Venturebeat

Bixyl Shuftan