CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the Facebook company is changing its name to Meta to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse.
From now on, we’re going to be the first Metaverse, not Facebook first,” Zuckerberg said Thursday at the company’s annual Connect conference. We can do what we are doing today, let alone the future.
While its vision is expanding to virtual spaces where people interact through digital avatars, the company said it is not changing its corporate structure. It will trade under the ticker symbol MVRS.
Facebook and its apps Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp will be placed in a separate division from Facebook Reality Labs, which makes its augmented and virtual reality products, the company said earlier this week.
Why did Facebook change the name?
The rebranding of one of the world’s most powerful and best-known companies comes as Facebook embroils in a public relations crisis over a cache of documents leaked by former product manager Frances Haugen and provided to Congress.
A consortium of 17 US news organizations, including USA Today, obtained revised versions of documents that provide a rare glimpse inside the company and its decisions that prioritize profits over people’s well-being.
Zuckerberg said this week that news coverage of those documents painted a “false picture” of the company.
Mike Proulx, Forrester’s vice president and director of research, said the name change would not change the problems within the company.
If the meta doesn’t address its issues beyond a defensive and superficial elevation, the same issues will take over the metaverse,” he said.
What action will Facebook take on negative news now?
Zuckerberg told The Verge, “The negative news that Facebook was toppling had no effect on it.” “Although I think some people want to make that connection, I think it’s a ridiculous thing,” he said. “If anything, I think this is not the environment in which you would want to introduce a new brand.”
The Metaverse isn’t a new concept, but has been thrust into the mainstream in recent months as Zuckerberg talks of his new vision for the company he started in his Harvard dorm room.
We’ve gone from desktop to web to phone, text to photo to video, but that’s not the end of the line,” Zuckerberg said. “The next platform and medium will be an even more immersive and embodied Internet where you’re in the experience.” From, not just looking at it, and we call it the metaverse.
What does meta mean?
In a blog post, Zuckerberg said that the name meta comes from a Greek word meaning “beyond.”
“To me, it symbolizes that there’s always more to make, and there’s always a next chapter in the story,” he said.
This means that the Metaverse is not a side project,” he wrote in a research note. “The company is ‘all in’ developing the next computing platform – the successor to the mobile Internet.”
But, Sebastian said, this vision of the future is not Steve Jobs and the iPhone in 2007. Zuckerberg himself estimates that it will take five to 10 years for these features to become mainstream.
“Zuckerberg presented a very ambitious vision for the metaverse – immersive virtual versions of work, play, socializing, shopping, traveling, and more with photorealistic avatars and spaces, EMG input (gestures, wrist movements), holograms and voice interactions. generate.” Sebastian said.
Still, many companies are already racing to gain a competitive advantage in the metaverse.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg took a dig at corporate rival Apple, downplaying experiences “more tightly controlled than ever” with “pressing” taxes on creative ideas.
What is the name change from Facebook to Meta?
Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian said the corporate name change signals a big change for Facebook.
What will be the effect on Facebook if you change the name of Facebook?
As they seek to dominate the next phase of the Internet, Meta and Apple are publicly fighting over how user data is collected. The changes Apple has made have decimated Facebook’s advertising business.
This is not the way we are meant to use technology,” Zuckerberg said. “The metaverse gives us an opportunity to change that if we build it well.” Kirsten Martin, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Tech Ethics Center questioned whether Facebook should be trusted with the Metaverse.
If Facebook executives can’t get control of the content on Facebook where the app was used to recommend rebellion, how will those same officials have control over the content in the virtual space they’re proposing?” he Said in an email.
Who was the first to change his name in a tech company?
Facebook isn’t the first tech company to change its name. In 2015, Google created a new publicly traded parent company called Alphabet to keep their separate businesses. Companies also change their names to distance themselves from bad publicity.
For example, Philip Morris rebranded as Altria because of its association with tobacco products. The Verge was the first to report that Facebook is doing a rebranding.