If “meta” means using the “most effective tactics available,” then Facebook’s pick for its new name — Meta — is appropriate. On the heels of numerous antitrust lawsuits around the globe, whistleblower fallout, and its quest to launch a metaverse, how else could the social media giant rebrand itself?
The name change to Meta was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference and shows the company’s drive to shake off its social media origins, the tech giant said in a blog post.
“Today we are seen as a social media company, but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter on Thursday (Oct. 28).
See also: Facebook Name Change to Reflect Metaverse Move
As of Dec. 1, Facebook will also change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS. the company said at the conference.
Facebook said in July that it was developing a team to work on the metaverse concept and later added that the company was looking to hire engineers for the project.
“We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it’s the next chapter for our company too,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter. “Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.”
Read more: Facebook Pins Its 2022 Hopes on the Metaverse, New Ad Tech and eCommerce Tools
Facebook also said it was putting about $10 billion into developing the necessary technology to create the metaverse.
“In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today,” according to the post.
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