Facebook is rearranging its names under the name of its renamed parent company: Meta.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the change on Thursday, saying he wanted a new, more visible brand corporate naming scheme To help focus on the internet’s next step beyond social media.
The change comes as Facebook faces a deluge of news stories and public scrutiny based on thousands of internal company documents obtained by news organizations, including NBC News. The documents, which originated with former Facebook product manager and whistleblower Francis Hogan, reveal internal opposition to employees over the platform’s policies.
The change will not affect the company’s distinctive blue app name, which will keep the Facebook name. But it would mean a new identity for the umbrella company that also owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
Together with the Messenger app, Meta You will own and control four of the world’s most popular smartphone apps.
The name is a reference to the idea of ”metaverse,” a term for a potential future internet focused on virtual spaces. Zuckerberg said the metaverse will be the “next frontier” of the internet.
“Facebook is one of the most used products in the history of the world,” he said in an online presentation. “It’s a popular social media brand, but it’s increasingly not including everything we do.”
“I want to anchor our work and our identity in what we build for,” he said.
Facebook’s focus on the idea of the metaverse has plenty of precedent in other tech companies, from the virtual world Second Life founded in 2003 to the online gaming platform Roblox. It has also been the subject of several science fiction novels and films such as “Ready Player One”.
Zuckerberg, who has a long interest in studying Classical Greece and RomeNote that “meta” is a Greek word meaning “after.”
CNBC reported that the company’s stock index will also change from FB to MVRS starting December 1.
Create Meta Reminiscent of Google’s 2015 decision to restructure under a The new parent company named Alphabet. This change separated Google’s search engine and advertising companies from other unproven projects, such as developing self-driving vehicles.
In 2019, Facebook shifted its branding strategy to emphasize the Facebook name, adding attachments For Instagram and WhatsApp applications to show the relationship to users. It did so at the same time that lawmakers and other Facebook critics were calling for the government to break up the company — now the Federal Trade Commission. asks a federal court to do.
The Verge, a tech news site, mentioned In mid-October, Facebook planned to announce a name change to “focus on building the metaverse.”
“Over the next five years or so, in this next chapter of our company, I think we will effectively transition from people who see us as primarily a social media company to a metaverse,” Zuckerberg said. He told the site in July.
The announcement of the new name and structure came at the end of a presentation on the company’s plans for virtual and augmented reality. Zuckerberg reviewed some of the uses of an immersive virtual experience, from gaming and pretend browsing to business meetings, digital concerts, and exercise.
“You will be able to do almost anything you can imagine,” Zuckerberg said.
“Teleporting around the metaverse would be like clicking a link on the web,” he said.
Marne Levine, the company’s chief business officer, also invoked Antiquity as another implementation of the metaverse, saying that Meta customers could travel to ancient Rome or other times in history.
“Imagine that you are standing in the streets, hearing voices, visiting markets, getting to know the rhythm of life over 2,000 years ago,” she said.
Facebook has moved into the virtual reality sector with shopping for Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion. Oculus headphones now form the basis of Zuckerberg’s metaverse plans, and he said he plans to continue selling the headphones at cost or at a loss to try to get more users.
