Facebook Name Change – With the recent innovation ongoing in The Facebook community, it was announced earlier in October 2021 that Facebook would be renamed. On the 28th of October 2021, It became official that the company behind the largest social network company is now known as Meta Facebook.
The Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in the announcement that the new name Meta reflects the growing influence of the “metaverse” which he described as a feeling of telepresence.
The move follows a series of negative stories about Facebook, based on documents leaked by an ex-employee.
The metaverse will have features that can enable users to teleport instantly as a hologram, to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in their parent’s living room to catch up. This will open more opportunities. Users will be able to spend more time on what matters to them, cut downtime in traffic, and reduce carbon traffic in the metaverse.
The rebrand is expected to position the flagship app (Facebook) as one of several products under a parent company, Meta, Following in the footstep of Google which set up a holding company, Alphabet, In 2015. Meta will also be the holding company for Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook recently clarify on Twitter that the name of the actual apps it operates such as Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR will not change as this is the innovation being carried out for the mentioned “metaverse”.
The metaverse is the company’s next evolution of social connection, the vision of Facebook’s meta is to bring the metaverse to life which brings about the change in its name to reflect the company’s commitment to the future.
The company also said in announcing the new name that it will change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS, which will effective from Dec. 1st of 2021.
In July the company announced the formation of a team that would work on the metaverse. Two months later the company said it will elevate Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who is currently the head of the company’s hardware division (AR and VR), to the role of Chief Technology Officer CTO in 2022 following the stepping down of Mike Schroepfer.
“Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach billion of people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers, ” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter.
The company also said that it’d spend about $10 billion over the next year developing the technologies required for building the metaverse.
Zuckerberg believes that metaverse will be a successor to the mobile internet as it will be operated using hardware such as Augmented Reality or AR for short, Virtual Reality glasses\s, smart glasses.
Meta also announced the code name for its first fully AR-capable smart glasses: project Nazare, The glasses are “still a few years out “, The company said in a blog post “We still have a way to go with Nazare, but we are making progress.”
Mr. Zuckerberg said the new name reflects that over time, users will not need to use Facebook to use the company’s other services.
How Comes about the Name, Meta
The Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in his Meta founders note that he used to study classics, and the word meta comes from the Greek word meaning “beyond”. In his view, it symbolizes that there is more to build, and there is always a next chapter to the story.
Conclusion
As a result, Mr. Zuckerberg said he would continue offering low-cost or free services to developers and creators and invest in attracting more developers through creator funds and other capital injections.