Exploring Meta Store: Facebook Parent Meta's First Physical Retail Space
Tech
Speaker 1: This is the meta store. It's the first ever physical retail space for Facebook's parent company. Meta inside here, you can test and buy everything from video chat hardware to virtual reality headsets. Let's take a look around The store is about 1500 square feet, and it's not at MEA HQ in Menlo park, but about 14 miles north, pretty close to the SFO airport in Berlingame [00:00:30] California. That's because this city is home to Meta's reality labs, HQ, which is working on developing the metaverse. The idea, according to MEA is that by letting people like you, and I try these products, we can start understanding how these devices could one day bring us to the metaverse. So we have stepped inside this cool little room here to explore the portal. This is the portal go. And what's really cool about this setup is that you can actually use this device to [00:01:00] chat with a sales associate if there isn't one available in the store. So I'm gonna try that right now. Okay.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 3: Hi. Hello. How y'all doing? Good.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 3: Pretty good. I'm just chilling, uh, making some myself some coffee. How's your day going?
Speaker 1: Awesome. It's going great. I'm excited to be chatting with you. I've never tried out the portal so never. This [00:01:30] is my first time trying it. Yeah, no for sure. Um, so I'm happy that you're here to help. Yeah, exactly. Um, one thing that I have heard a lot about is this story time feature. Can you maybe help me try that out?
Speaker 3: I could help you out with that. So Lama Lama, you see me? I'm mama Lama. Okay. Okay. Lama Lama red pajama reads the story with his mama. It's a good little RH situation. Totally kiss his baby's hair. I got more hair, little baby. So [00:02:00] see that when you be reach over, get the little AR effect with the hearts.
Speaker 1: Very cool. The AR is so much fun.
Speaker 3: It makes, it makes it very cool.
Speaker 1: Totally. If this was around when I was little, I know my grandma and I would've been doing this constantly, so yeah. I love to see it. It's
Speaker 3: Very cool. Baby Lama wants to drink mama's at the kitchen sink. Okay. They got bars. I can't watch. Yeah. And so you got the sons little baby calling out from Mala.
Speaker 1: Cool. [00:02:30] Love to see.
Speaker 3: And also a really cool thing about this, uh, is like, I can be telling this story and with smart camera, it keeps me afraid. So I walk over here. Let's call mama mama. <laugh>.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for, for helping me out with this. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: <laugh> yeah. Time for sure.
Speaker 1: That was the portal go. And there is the whole range of portal devices that you can try here at the store. [00:03:00] There's the TV, the 10 inch, the plus. And of course the go and next we're gonna check out the Ray band story, smart glasses. These are the Ray band story, smart glasses. And the idea here is that you put on these glasses and you can take photos and videos directly from your lenses without having to grab a camera. You can also take calls from these and listen to music, which is pretty cool. This is the only product that you can't buy here in store, which [00:03:30] is a bit of a bummer, but it is nice to be able to try on the pairs in person and at least see which ones I like best
Speaker 1: For the final demonstration of the day. I'm gonna try out the quest to VR headset. I just got the full tutorial from Ryan, got to pick a game, which is beat saber, and I'm gonna test it out. And what's neat about this setup. Is that not [00:04:00] only can I try out the headset play my game, but everything I'm seeing in the headset is displayed on this massive wall behind me. And this is cool because it makes the VR experience a little less isolated. If there's people with you, they can actually see what you're seeing instead of just watching you kind of roam around with a headset on.
Speaker 1: [00:04:30] So that was my experience with the meta quests too. Definitely super different from trying the device in somebody's house with that wall. And everybody watching me, it was a little intimidating, but also a lot of fun. And I loved how much space there was to be able to move around. I didn't feel like I was gonna accidentally bump into anyone so overall it was a pretty cool experience. I don't think I did too badly. And if you wanna learn more about the quest too, you can do it at this wonder wall. You can [00:05:00] explore games by your interest, whether that's music and rhythm, sport, and fitness or more, and you can also explore the quest to accessories. That being said, what does it mean to be able to explore these products in person, as opposed to just looking at them online?
Speaker 4: So a lot of people, when they think of Facebook, they see it as a social network, but in recent years, the company has been betting big on this idea of the metaverse. So I still think that the concept of the metaverse is a little fuzzy to people, um, because [00:05:30] a lot of people don't understand unless they experience themselves what a virtual world looks like. So at the meta store, you can put on a VR headset, you can try on a pair of smart glasses and you can video chat and see for yourself. If you actually buy that, this is going to be the next wave of the internet.
Speaker 1: This opening does come at an interesting time. It's happening, not long after Facebook's renamed to meta and definitely speaks to their focus on developing the metaverse [00:06:00] and perhaps away from the privacy scandals that happened last fall. This experience was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed getting to try out these products in person, since I'd really only seen most of them online, that being said, would I come here again? Not necessarily. I, for 1:00 AM not a huge fan of driving near the SFO airport. It's a little chaotic. So that's part of my personal reasoning, but I'll be interested to see if this store ends up coming as ubiquitous as say an apple store. One day only time will tell. So there you have it. That is [00:06:30] Meta's first physical store. What do you think of this store? Is it something you expected from Facebook's parent company meta? Let us know in the comments below.
