Is there room for social media in the metaverse?

How Meta plans to revolutionize our online experiences

The way we function in the world around us today is a beautiful interrelationship between all of the different aspects of what it means to be human -- to be social, to be happy, to be successful. We enjoy sharing our accomplishments from learning a new word to winning the Nobel Peace Prize. We are built on connections, human connections, and that is why social media has assimilated naturally into our way of life. It’s our nature to be connected, and connecting online allows those connections to venture exponentially from the potential of our everyday being.

Here comes the million dollar question, though. If and when the metaverse assimilates into our way of life, what does that mean for social media? How would our online connections translate our meta connections and affect our real-world connections?

We’ve heard of the Marvel Multiverse, we’re taught Stephen Hawking’s take on our own multiverse, but have we ever considered the idea of a metaverse?

When Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, a company that embodies designing technology to bring people together, he showed us what feeling the presence of being online can look like.

His intentions for bringing science fiction concepts of holograms and teleportation to life are extraordinary goals that will change the way our world works. A few of these concepts are already in beta testing, and so far they don’t illustrate any reasons for slowing down or terminating the projects.

With Zuckerberg setting out to build a virtual world that reflects our human interactions with endless imaginative possibilities, a lot can be said about what it would mean to return to the actual world. When the virtual glasses come off and reality is restored, what kind of reality are we returning to? Would there be a need to return? Would we want to?

Social media today is presenting a version of our actual lives to the people and communities we are connected with. If and when the metaverse takes full effect, social media could be about presenting the meta version of life.

Instead of working to create authentically pleasing feeds, we could be working to create extremely social meta versions of ourselves to attract new connections across the globe.

Perhaps within the metaverse there will be a need for social media. Our avatars could have their own Instagram accounts and share videos with the avatars they’re connected with about the world they are currently exploring or where to meet up for the chess tournament.

Social media has the potential to become anything and everything we need it to be as we transition into the multiverse. But here’s the thing. Zuckerberg is no longer prioritizing social media. Sure, his company has teams working to improve our social media experiences in the meantime, but his long term intentions are for the metaverse.

“From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first,” said Zuckerberg in his Founder’s Letter.

Eventually we won’t need a Facebook account to access other services. Eventually, Facebook might not be in the picture anymore. And if Facebook’s not in the picture, who’s to say that Instagram, a Facebook Business, would be around anymore?

Although the promises of teleportation and holograms sound freaking amazing -- it’s literally defying what we know to be fictional concepts -- we don’t exactly know where social media stands.

Social media is always evolving, we know this especially from the business end as there is a whole marketing shit to monetizing the potential of online business.

All we can hope for is that social media can withstand evolving once more as we find ourselves in the metaverse. We’ll see you on the other side!