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Facebook is Meta. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the company was changing its name to Meta to reflect its growing technology & role in the “metaverse.” Facebook owns numerous technologies and apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, & Oculus VR.
Facebook explained that the metaverse “will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world.” It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — & do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world. The Big Tech co has called it “the next evolution in a long line of social technologies”, ushering in a new chapter for the company.
Readers can watch the full Connect keynote to know more about how Facebook is Meta, & learn more about how the metaverse will unlock new opportunities at meta.com. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, said some experts, was taking a major risk with this entire exercise of re-branding & trying to lead in the creation of another World Wide Web.
Meta clarified that its corporate structure was not changing, but what will change is the way it reports its financials. Starting with the results for the 4th quarter of 2021, it plans to report on 2 operating segments: Family of Apps & Reality Labs.
The tech major said in 2004, Facebook changed the way people connected. Apps like Messenger, Instagram, & WhatsApp have further empowered billions of people around the world. Meta was now moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented & virtual reality.
In his Founder’s Letter, Mark Zuckerberg writes:
We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it’s the next chapter for our company too.
In recent decades, technology has given people the power to connect and express ourselves more naturally. When I started Facebook, we mostly typed text on websites. When we got phones with cameras, the internet became more visual and mobile. As connections got faster, video became a richer way to share experiences. We’ve gone from desktop to web to mobile; from text to photos to video. But this isn’t the end of the line.
The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.
As What’s New On The Net had written earlier, essentially, the metaverse will be a multi-connection, Internet-type platform that will allow millions of people to interact in a given space to experience both common & individual experiences depending on their preferences. For instance, it would connect thousands of music fans to attend a virtual concert where they would “feel” as if they were in an actual arena. Not only that, it would also permit a person to buy something from a virtual store on their partner’s thought suggestion without having to receive an actual text message.
Image credit: Meta