Facebook just revealed its new name: Meta (Details)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at the company’s Connect event that the social media platform’s new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”

“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added.

He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does. “Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product,” he said. “But over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company.”

The rebrand is part of the company’s efforts to shift gears away from being known as just a social media company to focus on Zuckerberg’s plans for building the metaverse. In July, he told The Verge that over the next several years, Facebook would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

What is the metaverse, and do I have to care?

Facebook has been under intense scrutiny over the past several weeks, after revelations based on damning internal documents provided to the Wall Street Journal by whistleblower Frances Haugen showed, among other things, that Facebook’s Instagram platform had become a toxic place for teenagers, especially girls. And antitrust regulators are pushing for the company to be broken up, as public trust in the social media platform is flagging.

(The Verge)