Facebook Inc. is re-christening itself Meta, decoupling its corporate identity from the eponymous social network mired in toxic content, and highlighting a shift to an emerging computing platform focused on virtual reality.
“The metaverse is the next frontier,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a presentation at Facebook’s Connect conference, held virtually on Thursday. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”
The name change is the most definitive signal so far of the company’s intention to stake its future on a new computing platform – the metaverse, an idea born in the imaginations of sci-fi novelists. In Meta’s vision, people will congregate and communicate by entering virtual environments, whether they’re talking with colleagues in a boardroom or hanging out with friends in far-flung corners of the world.
The new name won’t affect how the company uses or shares data, and the corporate structure isn’t changing. The company said its stock will start trading under a new ticker, MVRS, on Dec. 1.
The erstwhile Facebook is hoping to parlay its social-media user base, comprising more than 3 billion people globally, into an audience that will embrace immersive digital experiences through devices powered by augmented and virtual reality software, a business already being aggressively pursued by Meta and its rivals.
“Right now, our brand is so tightly linked with one product that can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today,” Zuckerberg said, “let alone in the future.”
Adoption of virtual reality gadgets – like Meta’s Oculus headset – has so far been minimal and their use mostly relegated to games and other niche applications. While achieving the broader vision of the metaverse is still years away, at Thursday’s event Meta announced a handful of product updates meant to advance that goal.
Shares of the Menlo Park, California-based company, which have increased more than 750% since its May 2012 initial public offering, rose 3.5% to $323.24 at 2:43 p.m in New York trading.
The name change follows Meta’s disclosure on Monday that it will start breaking out financial results for the division known as Reality Labs, which includes the Oculus hardware division, next quarter. Meta wants to separate its main digital advertising business from its new investments in AR and VR to let investors see the costs and revenue associated with those efforts. The company also said it will see a $10 billion reduction in operating profit this year because of investments in Reality Labs.
Meta may have other reasons to make changes to its corporate identity. Leaning harder into the metaverse lets the company appear to be diversifying its business at a time when it’s facing new pressures in the social media market. Younger rivals such as ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok are gaining traction among the under-25 age cohort, and Zuckerberg said on Monday he is retooling Meta to focus on attracting young adults again.
Building out the metaverse will also allow Meta to reduce its dependency on mobile operating-system and browser makers such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. to deliver services to consumers. Meta’s third-quarter sales and the fourth-quarter forecast missed analysts’ estimates in part because of Apple’s new rules around the data apps like Facebook and Instagram can collect from iPhone users. The company seems increasingly aware that it doesn’t own the foundations of the digital real estate most users occupy.
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