Today at Connect 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta, which brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand. Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that his company (which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) will be known as Meta from now on is not just rebranding but a strategic move. Zuckerberg wants to push for the metaverse, an immersive virtual reality space where users can find games, shopping and everything that can satisfy their needs. It’s the final frontier and Zuckerbeg wants to be a pioneer, an explorer of yore settling in a whole new world.
An online definition of a virtual universe Wikipedia defines the metaverse in the following terms: «A speculative future iteration of the Internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe Lifelike adventures The concept of a metaverse tends to be associated with the idea of total immersion via 3D devices. The truth is that you only need a full universe to jump in, with games such as World of Warcraft counting as metaverses. These are spaces of virtual reality where people can become their avatars and experience lifelike adventures, emotions, shopping, group events…
The name change was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference. The new name reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media. Facebook, now known as Meta, has adopted the new moniker, based on the sci-fi term metaverse, to describe its vision for working and playing in a virtual world.
“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,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. In July, the company announced the formation of a team that would work on the metaverse. Two months later, the company said it would elevate Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who is currently the head of the company’s hardware division, to the role of chief technology officer in 2022. And in its third-quarter earnings results on Monday, the company announced that it will break out Reality Labs, its hardware division, into its own reporting segment, starting in the fourth quarter. “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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter on Thursday. Over the past few years, the company has ramped up its efforts in hardware, introducing a line of Portal video-calling devices, launching the Ray-Ban Stories glasses and rolling out various versions of the Oculus virtual-reality headsets. The company has indicated that augmented and virtual reality will be a key part of its strategy in the coming years.
The metaverse "will not be created by one company," but will be a cooperative effort between creators and developers that he hopes to help "accelerate" through the development of technologies, social platforms, and other tools. Zuckerberg also touched on the need for privacy, safety, open standards and interoperability, although how exactly this renamed Facebook will approach that is left unsaid. Less encouragingly, he also explicitly called out the need to support cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
"From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first," Zuckerberg continued. "That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for." Facebook clarified on Twitter that the names of the actual apps it operates, including Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and even Facebook, will not change. In that sense, this seems similar to Google, which became Alphabet Inc. in 2015, but continued to operate under its older, much more familiar name as a subsidiary.
Zuckerberg said a lot of this is a long way off, with elements of the metaverse potentially becoming mainstream in five to 10 years. The company expects “to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale,” Zuckerberg added.
“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said. Additionally, Meta announced 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. Project Cambria will be released next year, Zuckerberg said. 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.” The re-branding comes amid a barrage of news reports over the past month after Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistleblower, released a trove of internal company documents to news outlets, lawmakers and regulators.
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