Social media giant Facebook, today, announced that the company will rebrand itself to represent the fact that it’s now a “metaverse company”. Speaking at the Facebook Connect conference, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, said that the company will now be called Meta.
The name change was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference. The new name reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media. Facebook, now known as Meta, has adopted the new moniker, based on the sci-fi term metaverse, to describe its vision for working and playing in a virtual world.
“Today we are seen as a social media company, but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
Here are the key takeaways from Facebook’s name change
— Facebook is only a social media app now as the name of the parent company has been changed. Under the new platform, Zuckerberg plans to bring apps and technologies under one new company brand.
— The name of Facebook’s parent company has been changed. The names of other Facebook-owned social media apps like WhatsApp, Instagram remain unaffected by the rebranding.
— Zuckerberg had already launched Oculus and other virtual reality products. However, now he wants the company to venture into virtual reality products and that he believes would happen best under Meta.
— Zuckerberg says in a letter that the defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence. Users will be able to do almost anything like get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create.
— Meta would let users experience the world of virtual and augmented reality through its new glasses and other virtual reality devices.
— Zuckerberg said that the metaverse will not be created by one company. It will be a collective effort of creators and developers “making new experiences and digital items that are interoperable and unlock a massively larger creative economy than the one constrained by today’s platforms and their policies.”
— About the privacy and security of the new platform, Zuckerberg has said that the company will focus on it from day one.
— Zuckerberg said that it wants the services to be accessible to as many people as possible. Considering this factor, the meta-services will also cost less just like its mobile apps that provide services without costing any money.
— It is important to note that the name change would not affect how Facebook and its other apps function. “Our apps and their brands aren’t changing either. We’re still the company that designs technology around people,” Zuckerberg says. This means that you can still use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram the way you used to.
— So from now on, the company will be Metaverse first and not Facebook first. It would not be known as a social media company anymore. As Facebook is now only a social media app that is a part of meta.
