Mark Zuckerberg announces Facebook new name at the company�s Connect 2021 Keynote. As part of a major rebranding effort, Facebook has changed its corporate name to Meta. It is arguably one of the biggest corporate rebrand. Meta plans to unify its apps and technologies under a single new company brand. The primary goal of the new brand will be to bring the metaverse to life. It will assist people in connecting, finding communities, and growing businesses.
On Thursday, Facebook changed the name of its parent company to Meta. It is trying to transition from being a scandal-plagued social network to its virtual reality vision for the future. The change only affects the parent company, not the individual platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. Meanwhile, Facebook name change comes as the world’s largest social media company faces legislative and regulatory scrutiny for its market power, algorithmic decisions, and policing of abuses on its services.
Facebook is hoping to leverage its social-media user base of more than 3 billion people worldwide into an audience that will embrace immersive digital experiences via devices powered by augmented and virtual reality softwares. Subsequently, it is a futuristic concept that Meta and its competitors are already aggressively pursuing.
However, Facebook is not the only big company undergoing rebranding after reaching the top. Google also restructured its company in 2015, renaming the parent company to Alphabet.
What is Metaverse?
The term “meta” is derived from the Greek word for “beyond”. It refers to a cyberspace parallel to physical reality in which a community of people can interact as avatars. Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash”. It refers to the integration of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a common online space.
A metaverse may appear to an outsider to be a version of virtual reality. Some believe it could be the future of the internet. People in a metaverse may use a headset to enter a virtual world connecting various digital environments. Additionally, the virtual world will be used for almost anything, including work, play, and concerts, as well as socialising with friends and family.
Facebook name change is the clearest indication yet of the company’s intention to stake its future on a new computing platform, the metaverse. Meanwhile, it is an idea born in the minds of sci-fi novelists. According to meta’s vision, People will congregate and communicate in virtual environments, whether they’re talking with colleagues in a boardroom or hanging out with friends in far-flung corners of the world.
The metaverse will feel like a mash-up of today’s online social experiences, expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world at times. Recently, Facebook has already made significant investments in virtual reality and augmented reality by purchasing hardware such as the Oculus VR headset and developing AR smart glasses and wristband technologies.
