Facebook is changing its name to Meta as a transition phase to its eventual migration to metaverse.
THE real world is changing rapidly and so is the online world. Perhaps a 100x faster than the physical world.
Last week, Facebook announced that the social media is rebranding to a new name called Meta.
After 17 years of being called Facebook, the social networking parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus has a new name.
The announcement came from the creator himself and the netizens did not take too long until they voiced out their opinions about the rebrand.
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg announced through a video the change at the company’s AR/VR-focused Connect event, sharing that the new title captured more of the company’s core ambition: to build the metaverse.
“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build, I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either,” Zuckerberg said. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”
The metaverse, which Zuckerberg is aiming for, is the name for a shared online 3D virtual space that a number of companies are interested in creating as a sort of future version of the internet.
In the metaverse, technically you can go to school, go to work, play games, watch concerts, browse store shelves, and much more without ever leaving your home.
If the internet is two-dimensional—text and images on flat screens—think of the metaverse as three-dimensional and multi-sensory including touch.
Zuckerberg also provided a demonstration of the company’s ambitions for the metaverse.
The demo was a Pixar-like animation of software the company hopes to build some day.
The demo included users hanging out in space as cartoon-like versions of themselves or fantastical characters, like a robot, that represent their virtual selves.
Zuckerberg used part of it to accuse other tech firms of stifling innovation with high developer fees.
With the announcement, Meta also introduced a new virtual reality headset named Project Cambria.
The device will be a high-end product available at a higher price point than the $299 Quest 2 headset, the company said in a blog post which will be released next year.
Meta also announced the code name of its first fully AR-capable smart glasses: Project Nazare.
The glasses are “still a few years out,” the company said in a blog post. Zuckerberg said “we still have a ways to go with Nazare, but we’re making good progress.”
Tags: #technology, #Facebook, #socialmedia