Facebook company to change its name to Meta and the internet is going crazy over it.
Earlier on Thursday Mark Zuckerberg announced that they will be changing the company name from Facebook to Meta.
“From now on, we’re going to be the metaverse first, not Facebook first,” Zuckerberg said at the company’s annual Connect conference Thursday. “Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today, let alone the future.”
The vision behind changing its name is to expand the virtual space for people to connect and interact even more. Also, the company said it is not changing its corporate structure. It will trade under the ticker symbol MVRS.
Facebook will be making a division where it’s other apps Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram will be housed in a different Facebook reality.
According to sources the reason behind changing the company name. Might be related to the hacking issue that made headlines earlier.
Facebook is embroiled in a public relations crisis over a cache of documents leaked by former product manager Frances Haugen and provided to Congress.
A consortium of 17 U.S. news organizations, including USA TODAY, obtained the redacted versions of those documents that provide a rare glimpse inside the company and its decisions that seem to prioritize profits over people’s well-being.
Zuckerberg said this week that news coverage of those documents has painted a “false picture” of the company.
Forrester vice president and researcher said that changing the name of the company will not solve any problem.
“If Meta doesn’t address its issues beyond a defensive and superficial altitude, those same issues will occupy the metaverse,” he said.
The negative news pummeling Facebook “had nothing to bear on this,” Zuckerberg told The Verge.
“Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing,” he said. “If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.”
The metaverse is not a new concept but has been thrust into the mainstream in recent months as Zuckerberg . He has talked up his new vision for the company he started in his Harvard dorm room.
“We’ve gone from desktop to web to phones, from text to photos to video. But this isn’t the end of the line,” Zuckerberg said. “The next platform and medium will be even more immersive and embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it, and we call this the metaverse.”
In a blog Mark explained that Meta stands for the Greek Word which means beyond.
“For me, it symbolizes that there is always more to build, and there is always a next chapter to the story,” Mark added