Form of words:
New York: Facebook Inc. is re-naming itself Meta Platforms Inc., separating its corporate identity from the eponymous social network mired in toxic content, and ushering in a shift to an emerging computing platform focused on virtual reality.
“The Metaverse is the next frontier,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday in a presentation at Facebook’s Connect conference held virtually. “From now on, we’re going to be Metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”
The name change is by far the most sure sign of the company’s intention to bet its future on a new computing platform — the Metaverse, an idea born in the imagination of sci-fi novelists. In Meta’s approach, people will gather and communicate by entering virtual environments, whether they’re talking with coworkers in a boardroom or hanging out with friends in far-flung corners of the world.
The new name will not affect the way the company uses or shares data, and the corporate structure is not changing. Flagship social networks, apps including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp will also keep their monikers. company said Its stock will begin trading on December 1 under a new ticker, MVRS.
Predecessor Facebook is hoping to introduce its social-media user base, which includes more than 3 billion people globally, to an audience that creates immersive digital experiences through devices powered by augmented and virtual reality software. Will assume, a business that is already being aggressively adopted by Meta and. its rivals.
“Right now, our brand is so strongly associated with a product that it can’t represent what we’re doing today,” Zuckerberg said.
Adoption of virtual reality gadgets – such as Meta’s Oculus headset – has been minimal until now and they have been mostly used for games and other specialized applications. With the Metaverse still years away from achieving its broad vision, at Thursday’s event Meta announced a handful of product updates to further that goal.
Read also: Why Facebook’s plan to rebrand itself could be a big risk
Shares of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Meta rose 1.5% to $316.92 at the close of New York trading. The stock has risen more than eight times since the company’s 2012 initial public offering.
The name change follows Meta’s disclosure on Monday that it will begin breaking down financial results for the division known as Reality Labs, which includes the Oculus hardware division, next quarter. Meta wants to separate its core digital advertising business from its new investments in AR and VR so that investors can see the costs and revenues associated with those efforts. The company also said that the investment in Reality Labs will reduce operating profit by $10 billion this year.
Meta isn’t the first tech giant to rebrand. Internet search leader Google changed its company name to Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, seeking to provide a stronger, more accountable corporate structure to oversee its separate businesses, co-founder Larry Page said. Time said. Alphabet became the holding company for Google’s Internet businesses, self-driving car developer Waymo, life-sciences subsidiary Verily and others, which included a variety of experimental efforts. Facebook’s name change does not involve such a significant structural change.
META may have other reasons to change its corporate identity. Tough leanings in the metaverse allow the company to diversify its business at a time when it is facing new pressures in the social media market. Smaller rivals like ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok are gaining traction among people under the age of 25, and Zuckerberg said on Monday that he was revamping the meta to focus on attracting young adults again. Huh.
The creation of the Metaverse would allow Meta to reduce its reliance on mobile operating-systems and browser makers such as Google and Apple Inc. to deliver services to consumers. Meta’s third-quarter sales and fourth-quarter forecasts missed analysts’ estimates in part because of new rules from Apple on the data apps like Facebook and Instagram can collect from iPhone users. The company is becoming increasingly aware that it does not have the foundation for the digital real estate that most users occupy.
“At some point, in the next decade, there’s going to be a new computing platform,” Sanford C. Mark Schmulik, an analyst at Bernstein, said. “So their view is like when it turns, we want to be — for lack of a better word — Apple or Google.”
Read also: Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name, says The Verge
Nevertheless, Meta is a money-making machine, and has become the world’s sixth most valuable company by market capitalization. Revenue this year is expected to reach $117 billion, up from $5 billion in 2012, the year Facebook went public. Net income is projected to reach $40 billion in 2021. Analyst EMarketer Inc. As of 2015, the social network accounts for about 24% of the estimated $200 billion digital advertising market, which dominates the industry alongside Google, which leads with around 29%.
Meta can also hope that the name change will divert the public conversation from a wave of negative news reports based on documents gathered by former product manager-turned-whistle-blower Frances Hogen. The document, called the Facebook Papers, was disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in amended form by Hogen’s legal advisor. The company is battling allegations that it misled investors and the public about its user development, efforts to fight hate speech and propaganda, and using the platform to organize the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
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Zuckerberg pledged that the metaverse will have disclosures about privacy standards, parental controls and data usage that his social network is famously lacking.
“Everyone who is building for the Metaverse should focus on building responsibly from the beginning,” Zuckerberg said during a video presentation on Thursday. “It’s one of those lessons that I’ve had internally for the past five years—that you really want to emphasize these principles from the start.”
Andrew Bosworth, the longtime executive who has been overseeing Meta’s AR and VR products since 2017, has been tapped to take over as chief technology officer in early 2022, a role that includes the development of the company’s Metaverse. maintenance is included.
Realizing the company’s vision of a widely used metaverse will be an uphill battle. For starters, there will be significant competition in the meta when Apple releases rival VR devices. Facebook was years behind rival Snapchat last month with the introduction of Ray-Ban Stories, smart glasses that can record audio and video but don’t yet have AR capability. Zuckerberg has said that many companies should build and contribute to the metaverse with interoperability in mind.
Meta may also face questions from regulators about how it will protect privacy and manage the potential for hateful or disturbing content in the new digital world of the Metaverse. In the end, the creation of the Metaverse would require a lot of money, with no guarantee that the idea would take off.
“It’s a significant amount of capital to invest in what is clearly a vague idea at this point,” Schmulik said. “You have to believe that you’re going to get the use-case right that’s going to drive consumer adoption.”
In the past the social network has sought to put the Facebook imprint front and center on more of its products. At the end of 2019, it tried To clarify, many of the most popular social apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp are products owned by Meta, as well as making the distinction between the corporation and the main Facebook social media app.
Apparel brands have put in their efforts to create a new corporate identity. In 2017, leather goods maker Coach Inc., which also owns the Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade product lines, changed its name to Tapestry Inc. The following year, Michael Kors Holdings Limited renamed itself Capri Holdings Limited after agreeing to buy out. Versace brand.—bloomberg
Read also: Facebook adds more corporate branding to Instagram, WhatsApp
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