Facebook is starting its “metaverse” journey by rebranding itself as Meta 

“Meta in Greek means “after” or “beyond”.  The Facebook group will now simply be known as Meta, all apps and websites including Facebook will keep its name, the Meta name will just stick to the parent company/group. 

“An immersive embodied internet”, said Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook and CEO of the now Meta, describing the “metaverse” that the company wants to do with the internet as a whole. 

What does this rebranding mean for Facebook though? And how will it affect the groups other platforms? 

The way Zuckerberg showed his vision in the recent keynote, it seems to be that all apps will have a new role in the “metaverse”, though each very differently from each other. 

“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 out 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,” Zuckerberg wrote. 

Meta also has a brand-new logo, a sort of symbol similar to an infinity symbol.  In a blog post, Meta said the ‘Meta’ logo was “designed to dynamically live in the metaverse, where you can move through it and around it”. 

Zuckerberg envisions the metaverse as ït will go beyond the internet as we know it, with interoperability, avatars, natural interfaces, teleporting, home space, presence, and digital goods” all being a part of the metaverse. 

The idea of the metaverse is far from an original idea.  The original idea came from the novel “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson, of course Meta won’t go the full-on dystopian route of the story. 

“Devices won’t be the focal point of your attention anymore, living in the ‘metaverse’ will feel more ‘natural and vivid’, Said Zuckerberg. 

Facebook/Meta has made this sound a whole lot grander than what It actually is at the moment.  This “living in the metaverse” is really just constantly being inside an AR or VR machine and/or headset.  Similar to some current video games currently being published and played, and hit its biggest streak a few years back. 

Meta seems to be making new technology old again, by creating a new idea but backing it up with old hardware, which seems like the opposite of what he said he was going to do in a few of his statements. 

Meta currently appears to be making a Matrix, just without all of the killer robots occupying the real world, but who knows, if Zuckerberg gets his way it may get there in the next few decades.