Facebook changes the name of its company and bets everything on the metaverse
The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said Thursday that the company will be renamed Meta to reflect its commitment to virtual reality. The company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, among others.
Zuckerberg revealed the name change during the Connect conference on augmented reality and virtual reality, in which he again explained his vision of what the company dubbed the “metaverse. ” This is a 100% digital parallel reality to which Meta wants to allocate a large part of its investments in the coming years.
The change affects only the umbrella company for all these applications. In other words, the social network will continue to be called Facebook and the change, in practice, will have almost no effect on the vast majority of users.
It is a move very similar to that carried out by Google in 2015, when it restructured the internal organization of the company and created a parent company, Alphabet, with several subsidiaries that include Google itself, Waymo (the autonomous vehicle division ) and the internet provider Google Fiber, among others.
The name change will be reflected in the New York stock market as of December 1, when the firm that now trades under the acronym FB will be traded under MVRS.
In his presentation this Thursday, Zuckerberg showed several examples of what in his opinion should be the future of humanity in the “metaverse”, where people would move with their personalized avatars, they would dress them with digital clothes that they would buy within that same universe and would attend events such as concerts.
In mid-October, Facebook announced the creation of 10,000 new jobs in Europe in the next five years, precisely with the aim of shaping the “metaverse”.
Zuckerberg bet on a rebrand in the midst of Facebook Papers, as the release of reports that question the company for prioritizing its profits over security and combating misinformation was called.
The documents, originating from former Facebook product manager and whistleblower Frances Haugen, reveal internal employee disagreement over the platform’s policies.
Zuckerberg based the change that “the name Facebook just doesn’t cover everything we do. ” And he added: “Today we are seen as a social media company,” but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people. “
