Chennai: Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has announced the parent company’s name is being changed to ‘Meta’ to represent a future beyond just its troubled social network.
Facebook changed its parent company name to ‘Meta’ as the tech giant tries to move past being a scandal-plagued social network to its virtual reality vision for the future.
The new handle comes as the company battles to fend off one of its worst crises yet and pivot to its ambitions for the ‘metaverse,’ which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at the company’s live-streamed virtual and augmented reality conference, said the new name reflected its focus on building the metaverse.
‘If we all work at it, and 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,’ Zuckerberg said during last night’s showcase.
Now, the metaverse is still very much a work-in-progress. During last night’s event, the company announced a series of software tools that include technology that will allow people to control programs with their voice or hands. Facebook also announced that it is bringing more hardware offerings. ‘This is the next chapter of our work, and we believe, for the internet overall,’ Zuckerberg said during the event.
‘We’ve learned a lot from struggling with social issues and living under closed platforms, and now it is time to take everything that we’ve learned and help build the next chapter,’ Zuckerberg said.