Facebook, a social network, will no longer define the future of Facebook, the company that will now be known as Meta. Facebook Inc. changes its name to distinguish its obsessive social network, which has a deteriorating reputation around the world, from a company that ties its future to the promise of a “metaverse”.
“Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can in no way represent everything we do today, let alone in the future,” Zuckerberg said. “From now on, we will be the first metaverse, not Facebook first.
Zuckerberg announced the new name during a virtual (meta-virtual?) Introductory speech for the company’s Facebook Connect conference. Under the new arrangement, Facebook and its “family of applications” will be part of the larger company Meta.
The restructuring bears some resemblance to when Google restructured into Alphabet, the holding company that now runs Google, along with its “other bets” such as DeepMind and Nest. Facebook has already said it plans to separate Facebook Reality Labs, its AR and VR group, from the rest of the company when reporting on its financial performance.
What is the ‘metaverse’?
Facebook positions the name as more a reflection of its future ambitions to evolve from a social network to a metaverse company. Zuckerberg has yet to clearly define what it means to be a “metaverse company” for its main platform and users, but augmented and virtual reality are central to the vision. The company has already shown an early version of a project, called Horizon Workrooms, which allows people to hold meetings in VR. The company also showcased new experiences from Horizon Home and Horizon Venues. And earlier this month, the company announced plans to hire 10,000 new workers in Europe to build its metaverse.
The name change also comes at one of the safest moments in the company’s history. The social network was shaken by the consequences of “Facebook paper”, a pile of internal documents collected by a former employee who became a whistleblower. The documents were the basis for a series of complaints to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the source of dozens of reports on the company’s failure to stop the wave of misinformation, hate speech and other damage caused by the platform.
source: Facebook
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Explainer: What is the ‘metaverse’ and how does it work?