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Facebook changed its name to Meta and the company said it would better “encompass” what it does as it forays into newer horizons like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality and smart glasses. The new name reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media. However, the new name will only be applicable to the parent company and not individual platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.
The rebranding efforts follows a series of controversies following Facebook amid leaking of internal documents by an ex-employee Frances Haugen who accused the company of putting “profits over safety”. While speaking at a live-streamed virtual augmented reality conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the new reflects its focus on building the “metaverse” platform.
“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,” said CEO Zuckerberg in Founder’s Letter 2021.
“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,” he said. Zuckerberg added that the team has learnt a lot from struggling with social issues and living under closed platforms. “Now it is time to take everything that we’ve learned and help build the next chapter,” he said.
As we observe, the company saw several changes and efforts in the last few years such as in hardware, introducing a line of Portal video-calling devices, launching the Ray-Ban Stories glasses and several versions of the Oculus virtual-reality headsets. ‘Metaverse’ was first named in a dystopian novel three decades ago referring to a virtual world that can be accessed by using different devices.
“The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. It’s a collective project that will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone. You’ll be able to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what’s possible today”, Facebook said. Furthermore, they also released a modified logo with a blue infinity symbol that replaced the thumbs-up sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
