Business & Economy

Facebook rebrands as Meta

San Francisco, Oct 28 (EFE).- Facebook said Thursday that the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is changing its name to Meta.

“We are a company that builds technology to connect,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said as he announced the new name at the Facebook Connect event. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”

“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,” he said.

In his 1992 science fiction novel, “Snow Crash,” writer Neal Stephenson used the term metaverse for his vision of a successor to the internet based on virtual reality.

Facebook said in July that it had formed a team to coordinate efforts to develop the metaverse and the company announced earlier this month that it planned to create 10,000 new positions in Europe over the next five years to advance the metaverse project.

“Starting with our results for the fourth quarter of 2021, we plan to report on two operating segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs” Zuckerberg said Thursday. “We also intend to start trading under the new stock ticker we have reserved, MVRS, on Dec. 1.”

Family of Apps encompasses Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which will continue to function under their existing names.

“From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for,” the CEO wrote in a letter published Thursday. EFE

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