Tech giant Facebook has rebranded itself to Meta, a brand name that reinstates its commitment to building the ‘metaverse.’
The announcement comes when the world’s largest social media company has been combating widespread criticism by lawmakers, regulators, and even the public concerning its market power, algorithmic decisions, and the policing of abuses on its services.
During the company’s live-streamed virtual and augmented reality conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that change reflects its increasing investments towards the metaverse. The company’s social media service, however, will continue to be called Facebook.
“Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future,” said Zuckerberg.
The company has made significant investments in augmented and virtual reality domains of late and now aims to bring all its applications and technologies under the new umbrella brand. The corporate structure of the company will remain unchanged.
Through a blog post, the company announced that its new reserved stock ticker, MVRS, will go live from December 1. It also unveiled a new logo at its Menlo Park, California headquarters, replacing the thumbs-up “Like” visual with a blue infinity shape.
Moreover, its hardware division Facebook Reality Labs, focused on AR and VR endeavors, will turn into a separate reporting unit. The added investment in the division will bring down the company’s overall operating profit by about $10 billion.
The company had also disclosed plans of creating a new product team, specifically focused on the metaverse, and hiring over 10,000 employees in Europe over the next five years to work on various projects in the domain.
The division gets a new name, ‘Reality Lab,’ as revealed by its head Andrew “Boz” Bosworth. Moreover, the company will drop the Oculus branding from its VR headsets, now featuring the new ‘Meta’ branding.
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