Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said the company will change its name to Meta in efforts to reflect growth opportunities beyond its social-media platform.
“Over time I hope our company will be seen as a metaverse company,” Zuckerberg said Thursday. He revealed the new name for the company, which also includes Instagram, WhatsApp and other products, per the Wall Street Journal.
At the company’s annual developer event, Zuckerberg described his vision for the metaverse that he sees as a key to the big tech honcho attracting a younger audience.
“We’ve gone from desktop to web to phones, from text to photos to video, but this isn’t the end of the line,” he said. “The next platform and medium will be even more immersive - an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it, and we call this the metaverse.”
At the event, Zuckerberg also addressed the decision to discuss emerging plans while the company faces criticism from lawmakers, researchers and users over the platform’s flaws.
“I know some people will say this is not a time to focus on the future,” he said, but argued it’s important to move on from mistakes.
“We want to serve as many people as possible,” Zuckerberg said. “That’s the approach that we want to take to help build the metaverse, too.”
