At the annual Facebook Connect event on October 29, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is now called Meta. The goal of this huge rebranding was to associate the company not with the social networking platform of the same name but with the metaverse, a virtual world that will combine all available technologies and devices. Plans to change the company’s name were announced last week and were first reported by The Verge.
Announcing @Meta — the Facebook company’s new name. Meta is helping to build the metaverse, a place where we’ll play and connect in 3D. Welcome to the next chapter of social connection. pic.twitter.com/ywSJPLsCoD
— Meta (@Meta) October 28, 2021
The company’s rebranding will not affect the name of the social network Facebook and other products. Meta will continue to work on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp while developing and primarily focusing on the metaverse.
The names of the apps that we build—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp—will remain the same.
— Meta (@Meta) October 28, 2021
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said the move from the Oculus Quest VR headset brand to the Meta Quest and from the Oculus App to the Meta Quest App will begin in 2022. Facebook Reality Labs will revert to the Reality Labs name.
The name Meta should reflect the new direction the company plans to take – creating the so-called metaverse. The main goal of the metaverse is to connect people and help them communicate easily even if they are far away from each other, says Zuckerberg. In a virtual world like this, people will be able to meet each other in the form of avatars, and all real-world content will be displayed as holograms.
The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. It's a collective project that will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone. You’ll be able to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what’s possible today. pic.twitter.com/655yFRm8yZ
— Meta (@Meta) October 28, 2021
Back in July, Zuckerberg announced plans to turn Facebook into a metaverse company. In October, the company said it would hire 10,000 employees in Europe to work on the metaverse.
The rebranding of Facebook also accidentally enriched the owners of another Canadian company with a similar name, Metamaterial.
Metamaterial rose 4.83% after Zuckerberg announced it was changing the name of its holding company from Facebook to Meta. The market capitalization of the Canadian company reached $1.5 billion, and the shares rose 25 percent at their peak.
The founding CEO of Metamaterial, George Palikaras, said on his Twitter:
On behalf of @Metamaterialtec I would like to cordially welcome @Facebook to the #metaverse. #GoBeyond $MMAT #AR #VR Meta, meet META® :-) https://t.co/8gOgkYTvSl pic.twitter.com/2i2PMKwzFA
— George Palikaras (@palikaras) October 28, 2021
Such mistakes are quite common. Before that, investors confused Clubhouse with Clubhouse Media Group, Signal with Signal Advance, and Chinese Zoom Technologies with Zoom video service.