Finish this analogy: Alphabet is to Google as Facebook is to ______?
Before October 28th, 2021, that would have been impossible. But as Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder, and CEO, announced at this year’s virtual Connect conference, his company’s apps and technologies will now fall under the umbrella name “Meta.”
Meta is not only the new parent company for Zuckerberg’s social technology but also a prefix meaning “beyond.” It is welded with “universe” in the term metaverse, which represents a coming age of digital technology dominated by 3-D virtual environments.
Zuckerberg shared his vision for the metaverse in a founder’s letter, as “the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and… the next chapter for our company too.” Meta’s platform will be an immersive virtual reality space for users to connect and share experiences online—like entertainment, gaming, fitness, work, education, commerce, business, etc.
He also explained that the “defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence — like you are right there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology.” The metaverse will allow people to do things never imagined in the physical world, just in a computer-generated environment.
But other than immense confidence in the next iteration of the internet, why this sudden change for Facebook?
Meta may have to do with a little thing called the “Facebook Papers.” An ex-Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower recently leaked internal documents that exposed the company’s dangerous social media tactics. They portray Facebook as a company that ruthlessly favors profit over protection for its users, allowing harmful content fueled by misinformation and hate to spread like wildfire across the app. The whistleblower also shared this testimony before a Senate committee, yet Facebook executives continue to claim her accusations are untrue.
So Meta might also be both an escape hatch and a good PR move, much like when the energy company BP rebranded itself to “Beyond Petroleum” in hopes of avoiding criticism for its harmful environmental impact.
Yet the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a watchdog group for the company, was quick to state that Facebook’s “meaningless name change should not distract from the investigation, regulation, and real, independent oversight needed to hold Facebook accountable.”
In addition to covering up the company’s baggage, Facebook’s rebrand is also a way to cheat death.
In his own commentary on the Meta change, a New York Times journalist claimed Facebook is just a “lumbering bureaucracy whose biggest breakthroughs in the past decade have mostly come by buying competing apps for copying their features, rather than developing its own ideas internally.”
Combating that perception, Zuckerberg announced even more mega news at the time of the Meta launch. He divulged information about a new virtual reality headset, augmented reality glasses project, home-oriented virtual reality space, and the list goes on. These fresh ideas accompanying the Meta announcement are exactly what the company needs if it wants to attract young users and detach itself from the aging, boomer generation. Yet while these new products and services are noteworthy, some may take over a decade to realize.
These upcoming developments also leave us with a lot of questions. Is the metaverse truly imminent? If so, will our main existence simply shrink to one of an avatar in a synthetic reality? Is this what we want in a post-pandemic world, or are we instead craving in-person connection and amnesia from the Zoom-dominated era?
The Harvard dropout, social media industry tyrant with a net value of 122 billion may have his own opinions on this, but what are yours?