Facebook becomes Meta
Facebook has confirmed the speculation last week that it is to undertake a major rebranding exercise.
The social networking giant announced late on Thursday evening that it is changing its corporate holding company name from Facebook to ‘Meta’.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company last undertook a minor rebranding exercise with a new logo back in November 2019. Tonight’s rebrand is much more significant.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the Meta name change at the company’s annual Connect 2021 event on Thursday.
“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world,” said the firm.
“It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together – and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world. It’s the next evolution in a long line of social technologies, and it’s ushering in a new chapter for our company.”
The name change comes as Facebook continues to find itself mired in scandals, with the latest concerning whistleblower complaints about its impact on the mental health of teenagers, and an alleged whitelist that ‘permits’ the accounts of well known people to flout the rules of the platform.
Mark Zuckerberg feels that a false picture is being painted of the company, and he wants to expand beyond just a social media platform.
The rebrand positions the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent holding company (Meta), which oversees divisions such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc.
This is a similar structure that Google employed back in 2015, when Google became a separated unit under the holding company called Alphabet.
Zuckerberg is keen to expand his futuristic ‘metaverse’ vision he revealed back in July, which will create immersive experiences that connect to work, games and real-world events.
Facebook last week said it would create 10,000 new jobs at Facebook across the European Union in order to expand the metaverse vision.
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