Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is so excited about what he’s working on that he forgot to eat. By his own admission, this “ keeps happening ” and he believes it may have lost him 10 pounds in the last month. In an unusually flippant Facebook post that garnered an offer from his father Edward to deliver meals (politely declined), the Zuck claimed that Facebook’s new products were going to be {fire emoji}.

While the delightful social media exchange has had its raison d’être online, with netizens’ “Aww” being filmed onscreen with abandon, the underlying premise may be reckless to ignore. That Mark Zuckerberg is up to something beyond normal is clear. The question is – what?

What is Mark Zuckerberg working on?

Zuckerberg, 36, is known for expressing his medium and long term aspirations. Sometimes these are responsive and figurative, often confirming how Facebook’s various social media apps bring people and communities together. Sometimes they have to do with lofty goals he sets for himself – like when he decided he would run 365 miles in a year and ended up doing part of it on his travels, or when he was said he would develop his own ‘Jarvis’. AI to handle things at home. And sometimes they have to do with products and offers that are very likely to become familiar to millions of people around the world very soon. This last point of excitement clearly relates to the last of these.

Extensive reading online as well as Zuckerberg and Facebook’s own posts indicate that they are working hard on multiple fronts – both online and in your hands / on your face. On one end is the speculation that Mark Zuckerberg has taken a keen interest in the audio format and form factor for content and communication, and on the other, Facebook’s growing “ belief ” in its material chops.

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook bring ‘social audio’ – sound clips, podcasts and live audio rooms

Just days before her boss’s update “ can’t eat, too excited, ” Facebook app manager Fiji Simo wrote on the Facebook blog that “ let it be From an in-depth conversation or your fleeting thoughts, we create audio formats that connect people to the things they care about. The post includes descriptions of Soundbites – done using a “Sound Studio in Your Pocket”; Podcasts on the Facebook app and a platform that has been compared to the viral invitation-only app ClubHouse.

Followers of Indian politics will recall that ClubHouse was the same app where Trinamool electoral strategist Prashant Kishor had a pleasant chat with several reporters, the audio of which had been ‘leaked’. The truth is, ClubHouse (and probably this new Facebook feature which was also piloted by Twitter) makes it possible to stream audio or host an “ audio room ” with others and an audience to listen to.

ClubHouse has been valued at around $ 4 billion, according to reports covering its latest fundraiser. These same reports claim that it is shown more love by its investors than by the people who use it (or don’t use it). All the evidence indicates that Facebook plans to integrate it as a feature on its existing platforms, rather than as a standalone app. The Facebook app manager’s blog post is pretty clear in this regard, and the company’s past willingness to emulate (read: copy) its competitors is well documented. The “ stories ” spawned Snapchat’s endangered posts, “ Reels ” is clearly an effort to grab onto the vertical short video format that TikTok (no longer available in India) so quickly made its own, and the company didn’t hesitate to build its own rival Zoom into its sequel, either.

Facebook’s own vision (what would be the appropriate aural conjugation?) For audio seems to be to get content creators to create short sound clips – jokes, stories, snippets, updates – and present them to subscribers eager to listen to them. The longer ones – those live audio rooms – could turn into podcasts when finished. As ClubHouse allegedly discovered, a constant supply of content creators is essential.

Facebook’s Hardware Game and Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) – VR / AR, Occulus, Quest, Portal and more

One thing Facebook has stated very strongly and even stated categorically is that it is very firmly in the race for the next platform – whatever comes after smartphones. He is currently selling a video calling device called Portal, which is clearly a product for the WFH era inspired by COVID-19. Even here, Facebook VP of Consumer Hardware Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth insisted that Portal is delivering something a little more than what’s out there. But the biggest bet is on the Human Machine Interface (HCI), which the Facebook Reality Labs is working on with a very serious deployment of resources.

Coming from Oculus, the maker of VR headsets that Facebook bought in 2014, Facebook Reality Labs is the custodian of the current high-end Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. The product has evolved a lot from the old tangle of wires that was the Oculus Rift and looks more like a consumer product than a lab prototype. However, VR and AR and even the legendary Mixed Reality have yet to see their “ iPhone moment. ” No one really knows what the finalized version of these technologies will look like yet. Facebook plans to release a pair of co-branded smart glasses next year and is working on a smartwatch as well. Clearly, Mark Zuckerberg believes that the new owners of Apple and Fitbit, Google, have yet to crack wearable devices.

Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), compared the next paradigm of the interface of human computers to the adoption of the graphical user interface (graphical user interface – essentially windows, icons and a mouse ) – almost 50 years ago. This area tends to be brought up in time frames as long as 10 to 15 years – eons in terms of technology – and some very confident end-game scenarios speak of brain implants – but let’s not go there. In this area, Facebook and other interested parties are also in the same corner as Elon Musk’s Neuralink, who has a sensational demonstration of how his system learned to move a cursor by following the thoughts of a nine-year-old Macaque. named Pager.

Facebook Reality Labs is quite the talking point in town among darling Silicon Valley publications. It apparently employs 1 in 5 Facebook employees and contains a number of teams chock-full of scientists and doctoral researchers working on virtual and augmented reality. One area where Facebook claims to have made progress in this area is in the all-important developer ecosystem. Over 20 titles created for the Oculus Quest 2 have grossed over $ 1 million, meaning developers will likely see an opportunity to recoup their costs if they create software for the platform.

Privacy, feud with Apple, Instagram for kids

Worth an estimated $ 113 billion, Mark Zuckerberg has also seen his relationship with Apple CEO Tim Cook deteriorate in recent years. The two just don’t seem to agree with Facebook’s use of its user data, with Apple seeking to limit the privileges Facebook’s products have to track user activity outside of what is done on their devices. apps, and Facebook responding genre by defending an “open Internet” by calling Apple through front page ads in major newspapers. An announcement that Facebook is working on an “ Instagram for Kids ” type product has also come under the scanner for concerns anyone considers obvious.

So what is Mark Zuckerberg working on?

If one were to make estimates based on word choice, gestation periods for various technologies, and the word on the vine, the new products Mark Zuckerberg talks about are more likely to be social audio related than social audio. to VR, for the time being. The fact that he mentioned “ products ” – in the plural – seems to indicate a prime feature on the Facebook line rather than a singular element. To put it in perspective, his latest update regarding AR / VR is about the “ Avatars ” for Quest and the difficulty of dressing them, and how one could have a virtual reunion at the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome, which is ‘pretty awesome’ – overall, interesting but nifty.

More revealing, however, is another post he shared along similar lines to “Too Excited To Eat” – a poster that seethes “Move Fast and Move Furious” and captioned “If I were Vin Diesel.”

Yes, he’s up to something.