The recruitments will mainly take place in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Ireland, reports CNBC.

"The EU has several advantages that make it a great place for tech companies to invest - a large consumer market, first-class universities and, most importantly, high-quality talent," Facebook said in a statement.

New online world

The term metaverse comes from science fiction author Neal Stephenson and refers to an online world where people can socialize, interact and work.

The company's ambition to link existing platforms with a new, digital reality where it is possible to socialize and interact is no secret or news in itself, the new thing is that the company announces that it is now investing on a large scale to realize the idea.

The new European jobs will include "highly specialized engineers", writes Facebook, but beyond that there are few details about what the plans for the company's metaverse really look like.

Several investments

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in July that he predicts that Facebook will in the next five years transition from being primarily a social media company, to becoming a metaverse company.

But no single company will own and operate the new digital world, according to Facebook.

"Like the Internet, its key function will be its transparency and interoperability," says the company.

Facebook is not alone in investing heavily in developing the new technology.

Microsoft and Epic Games, among others, are investing heavily in developing their own versions of a metaverse.