Facebook is now "Meta", with new focus on Metaverse 💯‍

On Thursday, at the Connect 2021 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook to Meta. 

It’s no new news that Mark Zuckerberg is an ardent metaverse enthusiast. Earlier in August the company had introduced the new Horizon Workrooms on Oculus Quest 2 - marking its first official venture into creating a metaverse-like experience. 

In a nutshell, a metaverse is a virtual world that one can plug into to interact with other people, work and create projects and do a number of things one is used to doing physically - but now it is done virtually.

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, Mark Zuckerberg's recent foray into the metaverse, with the introduction of Horizon Workrooms on Oculus Quest 2, showcases his dedication to this immersive concept of meta-marketing. The metaverse, in essence, offers a tantalizing arena where businesses can explore new dimensions of engagement, marketing, and collaboration, blurring the lines between physical and virtual realms. This shift presents an exciting opportunity for brands to redefine their marketing strategies, leveraging the metaverse's unique capabilities to connect with audiences in unprecedented ways.

Now the entire company is rebranding to move from being a “Facebook first company to being a Metaverse first company”, hence the name Meta. 

Speaking about the reason behind the move, Zuckerberg said,

“I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps”

He further explained saying,

“I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that.”  

It seems Zuckerberg had been thinking about rebranding for a while now since the addition of Instagram and Whatsapp. But with the launch of Facebook Horizon and Workrooms along with the ongoing projects like Nazare (AR glasses),  Zuckerberg says 

“These products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today. And I think just having a different identity for that is important.”

The ultimate goal, however, is to go beyond the current internet experience and create an immersive virtual world that looks like a scene out of a typical dystopian, science fiction novel.

There are many skeptics questioning the intention and the timing behind the rebrand. But we’d love to hear from you about what you think of Meta in the comments section below.