During the Facebook Connect event, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed most of the rumors that emerged in recent weeks that they wanted him ready to change the name of the main company and lay the foundations for the so-called metaverse. Let's find out what happened.
The holding, which controls Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and other services, will be called "Meta" . This is a historic decision, which comes almost 18 years after the founding of Facebook. A non-random choice and, according to Zuckerberg, necessary to better reflect the new corporate focus. But be careful, it will not be the social network that will change its name, as well as instagram, whatsapp and oculus will keep their name.
The creator of Facebook also spoke at length about the metaverse , a project on which he invested about 10 billion dollars in the last year and which according to his forecasts should convince the general public in the next 5-10 years , when people of everything the world will be able to perform activities that today are linked in the real world in a virtual environment, with hyper-realistic avatars and a fully interconnected world.
The Facebook's starting point will be Horizon Worlds , a worlds currently in beta system. Facebook intends to bring in its metaverse not only games, but also concerts and parties, to allow people to meet from different countries and directly from home or remotely, even if Zuckerberg himself argues that the metaverse cannot depend only on the work of Facebook. but that will have to marry the concept of interoperability, where objects, environments, people, will be able to pass from one product to another, even from different companies, as happens in the real world.
The metaverse that Facebook wants to create also looks at work, a sector that has evolved enormously especially in the last year thanks to smart working. Zuckerberg dwelt on this aspect and explained how it is destined to evolve in the metaverse, allowing more people or teams to teleport their avatars to a virtual environment for meetings and comparisons. Something that we can already try thanks to Horizon Workrooms, a system of work environments where you can get together with your avatars instead of the webcam.
During an interview for The Verge, Zuckerberg also told some background on the change of name to "Meta", a decision on which the company thought for a long time, and revealed that he had thought of renaming the group as early as 2012. and in 2014, with the acquisition of Instagram and Whatsapp, but only at the beginning of this year did he realize how much a change of this kind was really necessary.
Analysts continue to argue that behind the decision there could also be a cleaning operation after the scandals that have affected Facebook in recent times. In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about the Facebook Papers provided by former employee Frances Haugen, which could have dented the trust and reputation of Facebook and of Mark Zuckerberg himself, who has become increasingly a difficult figure to manage. According to the entrepreneur, this name change is instead intended to reduce confusion among users and change the perception of the group.