Last Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg appeared at Facebook’s virtual conference smiling and walking through, what seemed like a sterile room, when he announced that Facebook is changing their name to Meta. Even though this might seem like a quick decision, Facebook has long invested in creating their Metaverse that will fully emerge into virtual reality.
Mark Zuckerberg laid out a carefully crafted plan about how the so-called Metaverse will work. The company already has 10,000 people working on this project, in the US alone, and the plan is to hire 10,000 more at the European branch.
Metaverse – What Is That?
Leaving the numbers aside, you might be still wondering what Metaverse actually is. And you are not alone.
Mr. Zuckerberg mentioned that Metaverse is an immersive virtual reality where each person has an avatar and gets to interact with other avatars. Sounds quite sci-fi, doesn’t it?
Well, that is not all. Avatars, at least, later on, avatars will be able to play virtual games, collect art, attend virtual concerts, as well as attend virtual business meetings.
Meta Could Be The Solution
Nevertheless, the question still remains – why did Facebook decide to change its ways now?
Keeping in mind recent Facebook’s troubles, along with whistle-blower talking about privacy breaches and not caring about its users, changing its name to Meta, seems like an easy escape from all this trouble.
However, this might be a long-awaited change. Let’s look at it this way – Facebook was created in 2004 and most of its users are middle-aged people, while the younger population has fully switched to Instagram and TikTok. Even though this has not yet financially affected Facebook, it soon will. Therefore, virtual reality seems like a new and trendy way to get teens back on Facebook.
Furthermore, Facebook could benefit from building its own platform and stop depending on iOS and Android. This goes along with strict privacy rules that Apple has strengthened earlier this year and Facebook simply does not like it.
Nonetheless, Facebook has endured critical reputation damage and it seems that no matter what Facebook decides to do, that they will not change the minds of people who have lost their faith in their product. To top it all off, the new Meta logo resembles the M-sense logo, a German-based company that helps find the cause of your migraines.
And now might be the perfect time for Mr.Zuckerberg to download their app, because all this bad publicity must be giving him a bad headache.