Facebook becomes Meta: The new company name was announced Thursday by Mark Zuckerberg himself during Facebook Connect.
“We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”
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Mark Zuckerberg explained that the name Facebook did not fully encompass everything the company does now and is still closely linked to one product. “But over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company.”
The rebranded is part of the company’s efforts to be known as more than just a social media company and encompasses Zuckerberg’s plans to build the metaverse. Back in July, the CEO has explained how Facebook would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.” Of course, some voices also claim that the company sought to distance itself from the Facebook platform which has fallen under heavy criticism recently.
https://twitter.com/WeRSM/status/1453815679447076867
Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post that the company’s corporate structure would not be changing, but how it reports financial results will. “Starting with our results for the fourth quarter of 2021, we plan to report on two operating segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs” he explained. “We also intend to start trading under the new stock ticker we have reserved, MVRS, on December 1. Today’s announcement does not affect how we use or share data.”
The company has taken over the Twitter handle @meta and meta.com which previously redirected to meta.org, a biomedical research discovery tool that was a project of the Chan Zuckerberg Science Initiative. That’s part of the philanthropic arm Zuckerberg co-founded with his physician wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2015. In a Medium post on Thursday, the group says it’s sunsetting Meta.org on March 31st, 2022.