The Meta company, which was formally known as Facebook, announced its intention to open its first retail store on Monday. The store will sell virtual reality (VR) headsets.
The store will open at the company's Burlingame, California campus on May 9, and will sell Quest 2 headsets, Portal video chat devices, and Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, the latter of which will still have to be purchased online.
According to the vision of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in the virtual worlds that the company will create, users will be able to interact with each other, play and work. In a statement on the opening of the new store, Zuckerberg said: "The best way to understand virtual reality is to experience it. At the new Meta Store, anyone can demo popular apps on Quest 2 and project what you're experiencing onto a big wall for your friends to see. You can also try our other products like Ray-Ban Stories and Portal, and get a sense of what's coming as we build towards the metaverse."
The Meta company said: “Ultimately, our goal with the Meta Store is to show people what’s possible with our products today, while giving a glimpse into the future as the metaverse comes to life —and hopefully demystifying that concept a bit in the process.”
In recent months, "Meta" has been trying to offer new services and applications to its users in order to counter the competition in faces from other social networks, especially Tiktok. It was recently reported that Facebook lost users for the first time in the last quarter of 2021, which also led to a significant drop in the value of the company's shares.