Social networking giant Facebook, Inc. (FB) has announced that, as of Oct. 28, 2021, its parent company has been renamed and rebranded as Meta. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the new name is supposed to reflect the company’s ambitions to be a leading player in the metaverse, which he says will be the future of the internet.
Zuckerberg says that he has been thinking about changing his company’s name since acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively, but he finally decided to make the change earlier in 2021. “I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” he had hinted earlier.
According to a press release by the company made available to Brand Communicator, at the Facebook’s Connect 2021 conference held earlier today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta, which he says, “brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand. Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.
“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world. It’s the next evolution in a long line of social technologies, and it’s ushering in a new chapter for our company,” Mark shared more about this vision in a founder’s letter.
“I’m proud of what we’ve built so far, and I’m excited about what comes next — as we move beyond what’s possible today, beyond the constraints of screens, beyond the limits of distance and physics, and towards a future where everyone can be present with each other, create new opportunities and experience new things. It is a future that is beyond anyone company and that will be made by all of us.
“Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and identity on what we’re building toward,” Mark said.
Facebook reportedly has been investing heavily into building a metaverse, which can be described as an expansive, immersive vision of the internet. Its investment in such development work is estimated to be at least $10 billion in 2021 alone. Part of the project is supposed to include introducing a unified account system that will include all the company’s social apps, the Oculus Quest headset, Portal, and future devices.
Accompanying the announcement, Zuckerberg released a detailed letter. Highlights of his comments on the metaverse is captured thus: “The next platform will be even more immersive—an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.
“The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence—like you are right there with another person or in another place.”
“In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine—get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create—as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today.”
“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up.”
“Your TV, your perfect work setup with multiple monitors, your board games and more—instead of physical things assembled in factories, they’ll be holograms designed by creators around the world.”
“You’ll move across these experiences on different devices—augmented reality glasses to stay present in the physical world, virtual reality to be fully immersed, and phones and computers to jump in from existing platforms.”
“From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services.”
“Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.”
Zuckerberg’s letter also has a section bearing the title, “Our Role and Responsibility.” Highlights are quoted below.
“The metaverse will not be created by one company.”
“Our role in this journey is to accelerate the development of the fundamental technologies, social platforms and creative tools to bring the metaverse to life, and to weave these technologies through our social media apps.”
“As I wrote in our original founder’s letter: ‘we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.'”
“The last five years have been humbling for me and our company in many ways. One of the main lessons I’ve learned is that building products people love isn’t enough.”
“Privacy and safety need to be built into the metaverse from day one. So do open standards and interoperability. This will require not just novel technical work—like supporting crypto and NFT projects in the community—but also new forms of governance.”