Welcome to the Facebook Metaverse

meta platforms logoYou've heard that Facebook is changing its name to Meta. Facebook, Inc. is now Meta Platforms, Inc. or Meta to be brief. Search "meta" on Facebook and you find about.facebook.com/meta  (meta.com will also take you there.)

People on the perimeter seem to think that this rebranding is an attempt to turn attention from all the negative press that Facebook and Instagram have been getting the past few months. This is more like when Google became Alphabet. Google still exists and people still say Google when they mean the umbrella company (Alphabet) and I'm sure it will take a long time before Facebook is thought of as being Meta.

I posted on Twitter a few weeks ago when people were guessing about the new name that I thought "Metaverse" would be the new name. It made sense since Zuckerberg has been talking about playing a big role in the future metaverse. Of course, almost no one knows what the metaverse is or will be. I wrote about it here and I still find it difficult to explain to someone this "future of the Internet."

I also suspect that, like Google/Alphabet, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg may drop the CEO role at Facebook and move over to Meta. He made the name change "official" at the company’s developer conference Connect. He hopes that Meta will reach a billion people in the next 10 years. That sounds conservative if you consider that Facebook is at two billion already. Add in WhatsApp and Instagram users into one big metaverse and Branding and marketing experts, however, agree that the Facebook name is too deeply entrenched at this point and the company faces an uphill battle to recast in a new and more transparent light.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg said he went with Meta because it’s a Greek word that “symbolizes there’s always more to build.” Meta from the Greek means "after" or "beyond." I think it is more interesting - and perhaps more on target - that it also means an awareness of itself or oneself as a member of its category and self-referential.

Is it coincidental that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (the philanthropy Zuckerberg founded with his wife, Priscilla Chan) had acquired a startup called Meta that uses AI to aggregate scientific research? Officially, the project’s website says it’s a separate entity from Facebook.

Meta’s most obvious connotation here is the metaverse itself. So, what will Meta be doing in the immediate future? We have one clue looking at what they are doing with Oculus which they purchased seven years ago. That company builds virtual reality headsets that allow people to play 3D virtual games. It was also announced this week that the Oculus name would be retired and that its hardware and apps will now operate under the Meta brand.

How will Facebook change? It won't for now. Same with Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta is also Facebook Messenger, Facebook Watch, and Facebook Portal, along with acquisitions Giphy and Mapillary, and has a stake in Jio Platforms.

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

The author does not allow comments to this entry