Mumbai: Facebook on Thursday announced it’s changing the company’s name to ‘Meta’ to reflect its focus on ‘metaverse’. Using augmented reality and virtual reality, Facebook plans to create a greater sense of “virtual presence” to mimic the experience of interacting in person.
The change of name will only apply to the parent company and not to individual platforms like Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp.
The rebranding exercise follows a string of controversies at Facebook amid the leak of internal documents by Frances Haugen, a former employee accusing the company of putting a “benefit over security”.
Speaking at a live-streamed virtual augmented reality conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the new “Metaverse” bolsters its focus on building the platform.
“In the Metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything – work, learn, play, shop with friends and family, plus completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today,” said CEO Zuckerberg in Founder’s Letter 2021.
The change will bring its various apps and technologies together under a new brand. The ‘Metaverse’ was first coined three decades ago in a dystopian novel, which refers to a virtual world that can be accessed using a variety of devices.
“The Metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. It is a collective project that will be created by people from all over the world and will be open to all. You will be able to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that are possible today.”
The company also unveiled a new logo —a blue infinity symbol — that replaced the iconic thumbs-up sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
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