Facebook officially changes its name to ‘Meta’ to focus on virtual world

Facebook is changing its name to “Meta” as part of a major rebrand.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the name change during a Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference on Thursday to align with the company’s plans beyond social media.

While the name won’t affect the signature social networking app, the new identity will be the corporate parent that owns Instagram and WhatsApp. It follows in the footsteps of Google, who kept their name for the search engine, but rebranded the umbrella company to Alphabet.

“Facebook is one of the most-used products in the history of the world. It is an iconic social media brand, but increasingly, it just doesn’t encompass everything we do,” Zuckerberg said during the 90-minute presentation.

“I want to anchor our work and our identity in what we are building towards.”

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The parent company will also get a new logo, with a blue “M”Facebook

Facebook’s vision is to bring people together through the “metaverse”, a place for people to communicate through a virtual world. He expects the metaverse to reach a billion people within the next decade. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first,” he said.

“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.”

Zuckerberg noted that metaverse technology is yet to be developed and offered no indication of when they plan to release it.

The only announcement beyond the rebrand was the release of a new virtual reality headset named “Cambria” that will be available next year.