Facebook is no longer Facebook. Facebook is now called Meta. No, it is not that when you open the application of the social network Facebook tonight or tomorrow it has suddenly changed its name, but that it has been the company that Mark Zuckerberg created around his social network that has changed its name. Now it is Meta, and do not worry because it is a corporate and business change that will not affect your Facebook account.
The metaverse of Facebook
Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware, such as augmented reality glasses, which Zuckerberg believes will eventually become as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he declared that, in the coming years, “We will go from people seeing us primarily as a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
Zuckerberg’s comments aside, Facebook has been laying the groundwork for a greater focus on the next generation of technology. Last summer he created a team dedicated to the metaverse; most recently he announced that AR and VR chief Andrew Bosworth will be promoted to chief technology officer. And recently, Facebook announced its plans to hire 10,000 more employees to work on the metaverse in Europe.
But what exactly does it consist of?
Term originally coined by science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson to describe a virtual world to which people escape from a dystopian real world, the metaverse in the words of the creator of Facebook “it’s going to be a huge focus of attention, and I think it’s going to be an important part of the next chapter in the evolution of the Internet. after the mobile internet. And I think it’s also going to be the next big chapter for our company. “
Name change, the social network one more service
The change of brand, more at the corporate and business level, will not affect the day-to-day operations of the social network. In other words: Your Facebook account will not become a Meta account, Rather, the company that runs the social network Facebook will no longer be called the same, but will now be Meta.
With this, the social network of Facebook that gave him fame will become in yet another of the company’s services, such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and others. The new name does not change anything for the main services of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, which will continue to be known by their current names.
But the services could have more metaverse-oriented experiences over time, given that the intention of Zuckerberg and his is to create a connected personal universe – like Xiaomi’s with their devices. Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said users could wait “a more immersive Instagram experience in the metaverse“but did not go into further details.
Future Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth notes that some “relevant products and services” will also be renamed, as the lÃnea Portal, which will eventually adopt the brand “Meta Portal “. The company also plans to “withdraw” the Oculus name, and VR products will be encompassed under the Meta identity.
Following in the wake of others
Facebook isn’t the first well-known tech company to change its company name as its ambitions expand. A couple of previous examples of this would be:
- In 2015, Google was completely reorganized under a holding company called Alphabet, in part to point out that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate with companies making driverless cars and healthcare technology.
- Snapchat was renamed Snap Inc. in 2016, the same year it started calling itself a “camera company” and debuted its first pair of Spectacles camera glasses.
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