Facebook to Rebrand Company as Meta in Focus on Metaverse.
Social-media service will retain Facebook name even as umbrella company readies billions of dollars in investments in its new mixed-reality platform.
Facebook is investing in creating shared online spaces inhabited by digital avatars, with projects ranging from virtual-reality glasses to an e-commerce platform.
The Chief Executive Officer of Facebook Inc. Mark Zuckerberg said the company would change its name to Meta to reflect growth opportunities beyond its namesake social-media platform in online digital realms known as the metaverse.
“Over time I hope our company will be seen as a metaverse company,” Mr. Zuckerberg said Thursday. He unveiled the new name for the company that also includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other products at Facebook’s annual developer event. At the Facebook Connect event Thursday, he detailed his vision for the metaverse that he sees as key to the social-media giant attracting a younger audience.
“We’ve gone from desktop to web to phones, from text to photos to video, but this isn’t the end of the line,” Mr. Zuckerberg said at the social-media giant’s annual developer forum called Facebook Connect. “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.”
Facebook is already investing heavily in creating that new reality of shared online spaces inhabited by digital avatars, with projects ranging from virtual-reality glasses to an e-commerce platform.
The company is adapting its structure as well. Mr. Zuckerberg said on an earnings call Monday that Facebook Reality Labs, which encompasses augmented-reality and virtual-reality products and services, is becoming a separate reporting unit and that spending for it would reduce this year’s total operating profit by $10 billion. “We expect to spend many billions of dollars for years to come,” Mr. Zuckerberg said Thursday.
The metaverse that he has been increasingly promoting also gives him a comfortable topic to focus on as Facebook faces intense criticism from lawmakers, researchers and users over revelations in The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series, which showed that the company knows its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm. Mr. Zuckerberg has said the criticism paints a false picture of the company he co-founded.
Facebook and Big Tobacco: Why Social Media Is (and Isn’t) Like Cigarettes:
Facebook and Big Tobacco: Why Social Media Is (and Isn’t) Like Cigarettes
Facebook and Big Tobacco: Why Social Media Is (and Isn’t) Like Cigarettes
Members of Congress have likened Facebook and Instagram’s tactics to that of the tobacco industry. WSJ’s Joanna Stern reviews the hearings of both to explore what cigarette regulation can tell us about what may be coming for Big Tech.
At Thursday’s event the Facebook chief addressed the decision to discuss emerging plans while the company faces such scrutiny. “I know some people will say this is not a time to focus on the future,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, but argued that it is important to move forward even if mistakes are made along the way.
He said on Monday’s call that the company was “retooling our teams to make serving young adults their North Star.” That could dent user growth in some of Facebook’s traditional businesses in the near-term but would open new opportunities, he said.
