During Facebook‘s latest earnings conference call, Mark Zuckerberg announced to investors that the social media giant’s next hardware is going to be “smart glasses” in partnership with Ray-Ban.

The Facebook CEO unveiled the tie-up with the renowned sunglasses maker after discussing Oculus Quest, the company’s all-in-one virtual reality platform. According to Zuckerberg, VR can be integrated deeply into social media platforms, citing the data gathered from Oculus Quest.

The unnamed smart glasses are expected to take social media to a whole new level. Zuck teased that it will be capable of doing “neat things,” but he didn’t go into specifics.

Based on the initial announcement of the product last year, there will be no integrated display in the smart glasses. This means that it won’t probably have anything too different from the likes of the Lucyd Lyte and Amazon Echo Frames. However, smart features like Bluetooth integration as well as directional speakers are expected to come built-in.

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Zuckerberg says the new Facebook and Ray-Ban will be steps towards a new virtual and augmented reality, which he calls as the “metaverse.”

But what exactly is the metaverse? In Zuck’s own words, it’s a “virtual environment, like an embodied Internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at. He also believes that eventually, it will become the successor of mobile Internet.”

Building something ambitious comes with a cost. Aside from the massive financial investment from Facebook, it will take its entire ecosystem and partners to help make it successful. 

Aside from the smart glasses, Facebook is reportedly building a smartwatch as well.

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