Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has long spoken of the importance of "metaverse" - a version of virtual reality - which Zuckerberg sees as the future.
Metaverse, an acronym for "meta-universe", is a digital world where truth and the virtual world come together and allow people to move between different devices and communicate in a virtual environment. In practical terms, it refers to augmented and virtual reality products and services.
On Monday, Facebook announced that it was planning to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build metavers.
"Today, we are announcing a plan to create 10,000 new high-skilled jobs within the European Union (EU) over the next five years."
Zuckerberg has described the metavers as "the next generation of the internet and the next chapter" for the company, he told investors at a conference in July.
What is metaverse? The term defines a cyberspace parallel to physical reality, where a community of people can interact in the form of avatars. The concept was coined by author Neal Stephenson in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash.
Facebook has previously announced that it will create a product team to work specifically on meta-related projects. In the years Facebook expects people to no longer see it as a social networking company, but as a meta-company. According to Zuckerberg, metaverse will be the next largest computing platform.
Sources: Verge, Euronews
