Facebook changes its name to “Meta”

  • Facebook on Thursday announced that it has changed its company name to Meta.

  • The name change, which was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference, reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media.

Facebook on Thursday announced that it has changed its company name to Meta.

Facebook

The name change was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference. The new name reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media. Facebook, now known as Meta, has adopted the new moniker, based on the sci-fi term metaverse, to describe its vision for working and playing in a virtual world.

“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,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. 

The company also said in announcing the new name that it will change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS, effective Dec. 1.

Meta’s stock price closed up on Thursday.

Facebook

Zuckerberg said a lot of this is a long way off, with elements of the metaverse potentially becoming mainstream in five to 10 years. The company expects “to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale,” Zuckerberg added.

Meta also announced the code name of its first fully AR-capable smart glasses: Project Nazare. The glasses are “still a few years out,” the company said in a blog post. Zuckerberg said, “We still have a ways to go with Nazare, but we’re making good progress.” 

“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *