Social media giant Facebook has changed its corporate name to Meta as part of a major rebrand. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday that the company has changed its name to this extent. He said the decision was made in view of the growing importance of virtual reality technology (Metaverse) in the future. However, the company’s social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, will not change their names.
Zuckerberg explained that only the name of the parent company has been changed. He says Metaverse is the newest platform where people meet, work and make products in a virtual way. Zuckerberg said the platform would be available to hundreds of millions of people over the next decade, creating millions of jobs.
“Within the next decade, Metaverse will reach a billion people, post hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers,” he said.
Facebook has announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the “metaverse,” with Zuckerberg emerging as a leading promoter of the concept.
The charity Real Facebook Oversight Board, a non-profit organization, has been criticized for rebranding major industries such as oil and tobacco to divert public attention from their problems. “Facebook hopes that changing the rebrand subject will help them. The real problem is monitoring and control,” he said.