The social media giant made an interesting announcement on Thursday. Facebook announced that it changed its company name to Meta.
It is worth noting that the company adopted the new moniker, based on the sci-fi term metaverse, to describe its vision for working as well as playing in a virtual world. This decision was announced at Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference.
This summer, it announced the formation of a team that would work on the metaverse. And in its third-quarter earnings results, the company announced that it will break out Reality Labs, into its own reporting segment.
Over the last several years, Facebook ramped up its efforts in hardware. The company introduced Portal video-calling devices. The company from California also launched the Ray-Ban Stories glasses. Facebook made it clear that augmented and virtual reality will play an important role in its strategy in the future.
Facebook, now known as Meta, made the decision to spend about $10 billion over the next year developing the technologies required for building the metaverse.
Facebook and new opportunities
On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg provided a demonstration of the company’s ambitions for the metaverse. The demo was a Pixar-like animation of software the social media giant hopes to build someday. He noted that the company expects to invest billions of dollars to reach its goal. Meta believes that the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet according to Zuckerberg.
Furthermore, Meta announced a new virtual reality headset named Project Cambria. The company plans to release Project Cambria in 2022. This new device will be a high-end product available at a higher price point than the $299 Quest 2 headset.
The company used the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference to provide details about one interesting project. Meta announced the code name of its first fully AR-capable smart glasses: Project Nazare. It would take several years to launch fully AR-capable smart glasses according to Meta.
Facebook made a very interesting decision. Facebook’s new name comes amid the latest scandal. Its former employee released a trove of internal company documents to new outlets, lawmakers, and regulators.
Documents revealed by Frances Haugen show that the company is aware of many of the harms its apps and services cause to users. The company failed to solve its problems.
Several days ago, Meta’s CEO Zuckerberg refuted the claims and critiques in the reports stemming from the documents provided by Haugen.
