Social media company Facebook will now be known as ‘Meta’. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made this announcement at the annual conference held in Auckland. “We are re-branding ourselves to achieve the virtual-reality vision (Metaverse) of the future. Now instead of Facebook first, it will be Metaverse first for us.
Trading in the company’s shares will start from December 1 with MVRS (Meta Platform Inc) symbol instead of FB. Zuckerberg said that meta comes from the Greek word ‘beyond’. It represents the best of the company in the world. Our company is one that makes technology to connect people. The purpose of this change is to present Facebook as a metaverse company. After this, the main social app of Facebook will be present in the umbrella of the new brand name.
Zuckerberg said that the company’s other apps and services, including Instagram, WhatsApp, will work only in the new basic structure. This re-branding will be similar to what Google did to set the original structure under the name Alphabet. However, Facebook will not do corporate restructuring on the lines of Alphabet. The company has said that our financial reporting will be divided into two segments – Reality Labs and Family of Apps.
Zuckerberg said that with the new name, our intentions are also reflected. Also it is clear what we want to do. The old name may not have been very successful in conveying our complete and true identity, people are still associated with us. In the times to come, we will be able to present ourselves in a better way. Zuckerberg has decided to add @meta to his Twitter handle as well. Also meta.com will now redirect you directly to the home page of Facebook.
On 18 October Facebook said it was planning to hire 10,000 people in the European Union over the next five years to help build the metaverse. The metaverse is a new online world where people exist and communicate in a shared virtual space. Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and intends to connect its nearly three billion users across multiple devices and apps.