What just happened? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled the company’s new name, Meta. As had been reported, this signifies a new effort to make the metaverse a center of the company’s ambitions going forward. It’s also probably an effort to distance the company from the large amount of bad press it has received recently.
In announcing the name change, the company went all-in on selling the idea of the metaverse, a virtual 3D space that combines virtual reality and augmented reality technology. Zuckerberg during the livestream announcement hailed it as the next step in online communication after writing text on websites, and social media on mobile devices. He expects the metaverse will be mainstream in the next five to 10 years, with up to a billion users by that point.
According to Zuckerberg, the metaverse will be a space where people can interact with each other, their media, and real-world objects through VR headsets (like Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2), smartphone AR, and smart glasses. They’ll be able to work and play together in customized virtual homes and worlds, and possibly even engage in a “metaverse economy” where they’ll build businesses.