© AP
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Facebook is changing its parent company’s name to Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced this at a virtual event of the company. “The name Facebook no longer covered the load,” he said. A lot of novelties were immediately introduced.
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At Facebook’s annual Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented his company’s plans. These revolve almost exclusively around the metaverse, a kind of digital world in which we can live and work with others from home. The viewers were shown games that you can play with others, as well as examples of workplaces where you seem to be in the same 3D space with colleagues without actually being there. And it goes even further: the technology behind the metaverse makes it possible to walk around ancient Rome with VR glasses on your face, for example.
Facebook divided the company into two parts especially for this: one focuses on Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, the other on all that virtual and augmented reality. It should be clear: the metaverse for Facebook will be very important in the future. It will therefore also bring new hardware to the market, such as augmented reality and other glasses and projectors. They won’t be in the next one or two years, Zuckerberg said, “but these are the most exciting things we’ve ever worked on.”
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New name
–In Silicon Valley, the logo for the building has already been changed. — © AFP
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But even more than those plans, Zuckerberg was eager to hear about a name change for Facebook’s parent company, which had been in the air for some time due to the difficult waters it is currently going through. “Facebook wants to connect people from the start,” Zuckerberg said ahead of the announcement. “That should be the ultimate goal of technology: being able to be with others, wherever you are. The metaverse gives us the opportunity to do that. People can finally be at the root of our technology.”
The name Facebook no longer covers the load, Zuckerberg said. “Our company is so much more than just Facebook.” And so the new name for the parent company becomes unsurprisingly Meta. That’s a clear reference to the metaverse. “Our mission – bringing people together – will not change. We will continue to make technology as we have always done. But from now on it’s Meta first, not Facebook first. To me, Meta symbolizes that there is always a new chapter waiting to be written. I am proud of what we have already accomplished and look forward to a future full of new possibilities.”
The social network Facebook will keep that name.
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