Facebook has officially changed its name to Meta in an attempt to own the ‘Metaverse’ – A future concept of a 3D version of the internet in collaboration with a number of giant companies.
META, a new name for Facebook, is now taking over several key platers in the digital communication application under the new parent company of the Metaverse — Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram — now integrated as a new 3D concept of the internet where the company provides interconnection in the virtual space of communication apps.
The CEO of Facebook, now META, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the target of this rebranding is a future of innovative breakthrough in the world of virtual communication. “In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up,”. This rebranding is similar to what happened with Google several years back. In 2015, Google rebranded itself through corporate restructuring and will subordinate itself into a parent company of Alphabet.
Why is Facebook doing this?
There are numerous speculations that govern the motives for this rebrand. For one, scholars at top universities believe that this integration of key social media players into metaverse is a new ambition for Meta to not only be a social media platform but now immersing into something larger by owning the operating system of the future, including taking over rivals. A former employee, Frances Haugen, recently shared to the public a number of incriminating internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress. Antitrust regulators in the US and elsewhere tried to break up the company, and public confidence in how Facebook is falling.
In response to Zuckerberg’s numerous formal statements regarding the development of META, it continues to lay the groundwork for a greater focus on next-generation technology. This past summer formed a special metaverse team. Recently, it was announced that the head of AR and VR, Andrew Bosworth, will be promoted to chief technology officer. Just days ago, Facebook announced plans to hire another 10,000 employees to work on the metaverse in Eurpore. Zuckerberg claimed “(The metaverse) going to be a big focus, and I think that this is just going to be a big part of the next chapter for the way the internet evolves after the mobile internet, And I think it’s going to be the next big chapter for our company too, really doubling down in this area”.
The complication arose as while Facebook has promoted the metaverse a lot in recent weeks, it is still not a universal concept. The term was originally coined by science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson as a way to describe a virtual reality of people who are trying to escape from a dystopian real world. Now, it is adopted by one of the most controversial global scale companies to explain why its own virtual world is worth exploring.
Yet, the future for Metaverse is still a long journey of technological breakthroughs and innovations. It claimed that the size of its dream will not be ‘built overnight’ as many of its potential new products will only be realised in the next decade. As of the present, Metaverse is still assembling their plan as to where they will bring the future of integrated communication apps.
Words by: Tamara
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