Facebook has rebranded itself as Meta, a ‘social technology’ company. But what does that even mean?
We’ve been hearing rumors of Facebook wholesale rebranding itself for weeks, but now it has finally happened. Facebook has renamed itself Meta, with the end goal of ushering in the next generation of the internet known as the “metaverse,” encompassing virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and digital infrastructure backed by decentralized technologies such as cryptocurrency and blockchain. Confused yet? Here are the answers to some of the popular questions people are asking. Yes, but also no. The actual website and mobile app Facebook will still exist as a social network. However, Meta will encompass all of the other Meta-owned properties such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. The Oculus virtual reality brand is going away entirely, which makes sense as Meta is incorporating the virtual reality aspects of Oculus into its goal of creating the metaverse. Meta has already established a Twitter account and created a Facebook site that explains the details of the change. It’s not unlike what Google did with creating the Alphabet company to encompass the larger goals of the company beyond Google Search and its other branded products. This is a relatively new term, popularized in the 90s sci-fi novel Snow Crash. In that book, humans live in a dystopian world where people leave the real world in lieu of a virtual world. In an interview with The Verge, Mark Zuckerberg stated that he believed that the metaverse was the future of the internet. Where today we primarily interact with other internet users through smartphones, tablets, and desktops, Zuckerberg imagines a future where we interact with 3D avatars of ourselves in a fully immersive world.
