Financial TimesFinancial Times

Facebook patents reveal how it intends to cash in on metaverse

By Hannah Murphy

18 Jan 2022 · 4 min read

Pupil movements, body poses and nose scrunching are among the flickers of human expression that Meta wants to harvest in building its metaverse, according to an analysis of dozens of patents recently granted to Facebook’s parent company.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to spend $10bn a year over the next decade into the nebulous and much-hyped concept denoting an immersive virtual world filled with avatars. Rivals such as Apple and Microsoft are also pursuing similar aims that Big Tech executives describe as part of the next evolution of the internet.

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