With focus on virtual reality, Facebook changes name to 'Meta'
What's the story
Facebook has announced that it has changed its parent company name to 'Meta.' The new moniker is based on the sci-fi term metaverse. The re-branding is aimed to reflect the company's growth beyond social media and its entry into the virtual world. Effective December 1, the company will also change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS.
Quote
'Metaverse is the next frontier'
"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," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Mixed reality
Understanding Zuckerberg's idea of a metaverse
"The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world," the company said in a blog post. "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."
Background
The formation of the metaverse team was announced in July
In July, Facebook had announced the formation of a team to work on the metaverse. It was announced that Andrew Bosworth, the head of company's hardware division, Reality Labs, will be elevated to the position of the chief technology officer later in 2022. The division in itself will be broken out into its own reporting segment.
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'Metaverse will connect a billion people within the next decade'
"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," said Zuckerberg.
Investment
$10 billion investment for building technologies for metaverse
Over the next year, Meta will invest around $10 billion for developing the technologies required for the metaverse and $150 million in immersive learning to train the next generation of creators. At the Facebook Connect conference, Zuckerberg demonstrated the idea of a metaverse through an animation where users were interacting with each other in fantastical versions of themselves.
New hardware
Meta has also showcased its Project Cambria VR headset
We have already seen various versions of the Oculus VR headsets as well as the new Ray-Ban Stories glasses. Now, Meta has announced a new high-end VR headset called Project Cambria. It will be released next year packed with advanced technologies, including "improved social presence, color Passthrough, and pancake optics." The company is also working on its first fully-fledged AR glasses called Project Nazare.
Status Quo
Will things change for Facebook and partner apps?
Following the re-branding, the company's corporate structure and how it uses or shares data will, however, not change. This means that Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Oculus users need not worry and can keep using the social media apps as before. However, from Q4 of 2021, the company will report on two operating segments: Reality Labs and Family of Apps.