Facebook's Metaverse

**Facebook Rebrands as Meta: A New Era Beyond Social Media**

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the tech industry, Facebook has officially rebranded itself as Meta. The announcement came during its Connect event, marking a significant pivot for the social media giant. Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the name change is rooted in the idea of "going beyond," signaling a shift toward a broader focus on the metaverse and virtual reality (VR) technologies.

### The Name Change: A New Identity

The decision to rebrand as Meta is not merely about semantics; it reflects Facebook's ambition to move beyond its traditional identity as a social media platform. This change comes amid growing criticism over issues like misinformation, privacy concerns, and the platform's role in fostering polarized online discussions. By renaming itself, Facebook aims to distance itself from these negative associations and position itself as a forward-thinking company focused on innovation.

The rebranding also draws parallels to Ron Artest, the former NBA player who changed his name to "Meta World Peace" after a controversial incident with fans. Like Artest, Facebook is seeking redemption by reinventing its image. However, while the name change may distract from recent controversies like the Franciscan Haugen lawsuit, it's unlikely to resolve deeper issues. Nevertheless, as a corporate branding expert might say, rebranding doesn't hurt, especially when the company isn't facing immediate disaster.

### The Metaverse: A New Frontier

At the heart of Facebook's transformation is its focus on the metaverse—a virtual reality space where users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users. Zuckerberg envisions a future where people spend significant time in VR, conducting work meetings, socializing, and engaging in digital experiences. The metaverse represents a shift away from traditional computing paradigms, offering a more immersive and interconnected experience.

However, the metaverse's potential is not limited to consumer applications. Facebook (Meta) is also exploring its business applications, such as virtual collaboration spaces for corporate teams. This focus on the business side of the metaverse reflects both the lessons learned during the pandemic and the company's recognition that VR technology is still in its early stages.

### The Apple-Meta Rivalry: A Subtle Subtweet

One of the most overlooked aspects of Meta's announcement was its implicit criticism of Apple's app store policies. Zuckerberg emphasized a future where developers have more control over their applications, sideloading capabilities, and low fees—directly contrasting with Apple's strict ecosystem rules. This subtle subtweet highlights the ongoing tension between Meta and Apple, which escalated after Apple restricted Facebook's ability to track users across apps.

For Meta, the metaverse represents an opportunity to break free from intermediaries like Apple, giving it more control over its relationship with users. While this vision is ambitious, it will likely take years to realize, as VR technology is far from reaching the level of sophistication needed for widespread adoption.

### The Future of Social Media and Tech

Looking ahead, Meta's rebranding and focus on the metaverse signal a shift in the company's priorities. While its core social media platforms remain vital, especially among younger users, Meta is betting on virtual reality to drive future growth. This pivot comes with risks, as VR adoption is still niche, but Zuckerberg appears confident that this new direction will redefine the company's legacy.

In conclusion, Meta's rebranding marks a bold step into uncharted territory. Whether this move will pay off remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the tech world will be watching closely as Meta navigates its journey beyond social media and into the metaverse.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is twit it has officially happened facebook has announced that uh it is rebranding i guess the company's rebranding and going by the name metanow uh apparently mark zuckerberg says that meta has its root in uh meaning beyond and so facebook is going beyond what it was originally into so much more and joining us again after the break to talk about everything that facebook has announced thus far at its connect event is alex kendricks of the big technology podcast welcome back to the show alex it's great to be back thanks again for having me yes so let's get into things let's start with this name thing because i think this is the the big kind of kickoff and as you said earlier name change isn't super important it's about what other changes might come with it but with this name change a lot of the early rumors about it surrounded the reasoning behind it and i'm curious if you also feel that this is facebook trying to get out from under the um the way that that uh folks seem to feel about facebook and the ties that it has to uh spreading misinformation or to as you you mentioned even earlier how it was supposed to improve upon casual conversation but has resulted in everyone yelling at each other is this change about the company uh trying to broaden its horizons i guess the pun is intended there or is it about simply rebranding to get away from the name facebook there was a indian indianapolis indiana pacers player his name was ron artest and he got he was a bit of a hot head and got into some trouble when he went into the stands you know after a fan threw a cup of uh i think it was like beer on him uh and and him and his fellow teammates sort of got into it with the fans and he was suspended for a large chunk of the season there was just a documentary about this on on netflix um and he ended up changing his name from ron artest to meta world peace and um you know by changing his name to mineral peace he decided that you know he didn't want to be associated with that player that would jump into the stands uh he wanted to be someone who believed in tranquility and and good things for the globe and that i believe is what we're seeing with facebook today where you know they have endured a long series of scandals and for them they want to change this narrative you know they take their suspension although they've really kept going and come back uh and uh and be meta just like run or test and so that's what i think is happening here um and uh you know for them it's hard to say i mean certainly took everybody's attention off of the francis haugen stuff for a minute um but uh you know if you're a corporate branding expert you'd probably be like all right well it doesn't hurt facebook i mean you know it's not going to get much worse so go for it that's what we're seeing that's a good point yeah not going to get much worse that's a really good point um all right so we've got facebook rebranding as meta and the reason why facebook says that is again going beyond everything etc and the metaverse is this huge uh hashtag of a word that has come out um particularly surrounding facebook this idea that you would have this be it this mixed reality virtual reality augmented reality space where you uh could exist with other people but facebook's focus seems to be surrounding kind of the business side of the metaverse can you talk about kind of what you know about facebook's um ongoing plans for the metaverse i know again a lot of this was just announced today but the rumors leading up to this surrounding the metaverse and uh zuckerberg's early conversations about it you might have some some insights there because i'm curious uh the kind of the consumer side of things for the metaverse and what we can expect but then also the business side of things and what uh what everyone can expect in terms of will there be ads flying at our face while we're trying to hang out with our sister from across the country well here's the most important thing the thing i think has been most overlooked is that and i think zuckerberg was so explicit about it today that we're no longer going to overlook it but facebook hates being subject to the whims of apple you know facebook and apple really don't like each other facebook doesn't like apple's fee it doesn't like the fact that you know apple it's subject to apple's rules and regulations in fact you know looking back you know that apple took facebook's internal uh apps offline because it violated some apple policy and facebook couldn't work for a day because of that so there's absolutely no love lost between cook and mark zuckerberg and what zuckerberg wants is a world where he's free of intermediaries that will mediate the relationship between him and his users and so why is facebook so taken with this idea for the metaverse something that you know basically has us living in vr and doing all of our computing there and it's because facebook controls the operating system and he was very explicit in his talk today talking about how um you know when it comes to the metaverse uh you know there there will be low fees it will be developer friendly you can sideload apps i mean it felt to me like a one hour long subtweet of apple's business practices and apple has come at facebook hard right they've also cut off the company's ability largely to target ads off of the app and to track people off the app which has really hit facebook's business although we didn't see it so bad in his earnings uh in this most recent earnings report uh and so you know facebook i actually broke news last week that facebook said it wants to have a knife fight with apple right and so uh this is the knife fight this is what we're watching it's two enormous two of the biggest companies to the most powerful companies that we have in this country and the worlds uh taking their knifes out and getting to stabbing and this is facebook's uh attempt to step back at apple that that makes sense yes there was uh as you as you put put it sort of a subtweet section where they were talking about how they see uh the metaverse existing and uh how it won't do this that and the other and all of the things that they were mentioning were all of the things that people criticize apple's app store practices about uh so that was interesting to see they brought on a um a creator or a creative i guess um who talked who they were talking to about doing sort of makeup and cosmetics in the metaverse and how people would pay for the privilege of purchasing products that would be exclusive to them in the metaverse and so we can kind of sort of picture that future uh but there was a huge focus on the business side of things too of of the the the space where we have uh corporate kind of creating metaverse spaces where people can go and work together and i'm curious if you think that um this is more of a result of you know our pandemic living or if the metaverse kind of always in the same way the hololens it started out as maybe it was going to be a consumer product and they realized that the microsoft's hololens was better for uh sort of the corporate area do we think that's the same thing here where eventually it would have been some sort of corporate technology um but they just got there faster because of the pandemic or what are just your thoughts in general on uh their focus uh on bus on the business side of things well i think that facebook did a good job setting expectations at the very beginning where they said this isn't stuff we're going to roll out right now it's not a typical developer conference we're really going to lay out our vision for the future and i think that's particularly important because you think about their vision for the future this is something that's going to not happen this year not happen next year but it might happen four five six seven ten years down the road vr technology simply is just not at the point where it's going to be something that people would rather get into virtual reality versus you know talking to somebody on a zoo or in person you know in person is still pretty cool i hate to break it to the folks of facebook but people still like the real world um and you know virtual reality like if it wasn't gonna if this stuff was gonna take off why didn't it take off during the pandemic we were all stuck at home it would have been amazing it's just the fact that the technology isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be so i think there is a a good case to be made that you know maybe five ten years down the line um we will maybe conduct some meetings in virtual reality you know maybe put on ar glasses and have some hologram of our co-worker beam in uh to the conference table with us but i do think that it's important in this discussion to just highlight the fact that it's going to take a long long time to get to get to this place and so you know i i personally you know we're here at big technology and you know we're we're tech forward we like to use tech in the workplace but i swear to you i'm not asking anyone to meet with me in virtual reality anytime soon yeah i'm not feeling that either and i and i actually really enjoy the virtual reality experience um one question i have about this i'm curious to know your take on this right now the vr that we know the vr that the metaverse as as zuckerberg kind of spelled out today runs on the quest and the quest to headset which runs on android which is owned by google um how important is it do you think for facebook to eventually build its own operating system to control its entire destiny here or is that even necessary what do you think about that it's a really good question um look i sat with mark zuckerberg and talked to him about this when i was reporting out always day one and he talked about the fact that you know a lot of um a lot of operating systems doesn't give you the control that you would like especially if you're a company like facebook to interact with your users in a way that you think is best so give you an example so zuckerberg told me that um the thing is with with apps with a phone operating system you pick um you you pick the app and then um you pick the the person you want you say you pick the action and then you pick the person you want to do it with in real life you pick the person first right hey let's hang this weekend and then you pick um the the action that you want to take so um so yeah so i think that like he wants that control obviously building on android allows you a much greater level of control than being an app on the iphone and for them the most important key is to have a paradigm shift where we go from using our phones to using virtual reality and as soon as we get there if they're controlling that number one headset sort of doesn't matter what the underlying operating system is as long as it allows them to customize and android will uh and so then that's that's a win for that i guess my last question for you is along with the shift in the name you mentioned there could be some other changes that take place at the company do we think anything else will happen outside of the name change as facebook continues to focus on the metaverse and uh sort of what's next in in social space yeah look i i thought there was a chance that chris cox was going to become who's the chief product officer facebook was going to become the ceo of facebook and mark zuckerberg mark zuckerberg was going to become the chairman ceo of meta uh that hasn't happened so obviously zuck still has you know full control and uh and you know outside of that there is some corporate like restructure or corporate re-emphasis that's going on reality labs is going to lead them into the future uh this week zuckerberg also talked about the fact that you know it's all about um you know focusing on young users and they don't care as much about boomers i'm paraphrasing but that was sort of the way he put it uh and so that's what the future for facebook is gonna look like it's gonna be about young adults if you look through some of those facebook papers you can see that facebook has a serious problem with the kids uh and so it's gonna work to fix that and then try to put this um you know reality labs the portal the uh the oculus and then augmented reality front and center but you know it's a risky bet because you know social media is a you know is live and thriving there's three and a half billion plus people that use facebook's family of apps uh much less using you know these devices so and and also less of a use case and less of an immediate payoff you know so the growth numbers will look good because you're starting from a really small base but overall it would be tough to to for them to turn their reality labs into the same blockbuster success as you know business wise at least that facebook has been and so what it gives us is another five years of extremely interesting stories and plot lines with this you know uh ever you know uh persistently compelling uh company and so here we go youthis is twit it has officially happened facebook has announced that uh it is rebranding i guess the company's rebranding and going by the name metanow uh apparently mark zuckerberg says that meta has its root in uh meaning beyond and so facebook is going beyond what it was originally into so much more and joining us again after the break to talk about everything that facebook has announced thus far at its connect event is alex kendricks of the big technology podcast welcome back to the show alex it's great to be back thanks again for having me yes so let's get into things let's start with this name thing because i think this is the the big kind of kickoff and as you said earlier name change isn't super important it's about what other changes might come with it but with this name change a lot of the early rumors about it surrounded the reasoning behind it and i'm curious if you also feel that this is facebook trying to get out from under the um the way that that uh folks seem to feel about facebook and the ties that it has to uh spreading misinformation or to as you you mentioned even earlier how it was supposed to improve upon casual conversation but has resulted in everyone yelling at each other is this change about the company uh trying to broaden its horizons i guess the pun is intended there or is it about simply rebranding to get away from the name facebook there was a indian indianapolis indiana pacers player his name was ron artest and he got he was a bit of a hot head and got into some trouble when he went into the stands you know after a fan threw a cup of uh i think it was like beer on him uh and and him and his fellow teammates sort of got into it with the fans and he was suspended for a large chunk of the season there was just a documentary about this on on netflix um and he ended up changing his name from ron artest to meta world peace and um you know by changing his name to mineral peace he decided that you know he didn't want to be associated with that player that would jump into the stands uh he wanted to be someone who believed in tranquility and and good things for the globe and that i believe is what we're seeing with facebook today where you know they have endured a long series of scandals and for them they want to change this narrative you know they take their suspension although they've really kept going and come back uh and uh and be meta just like run or test and so that's what i think is happening here um and uh you know for them it's hard to say i mean certainly took everybody's attention off of the francis haugen stuff for a minute um but uh you know if you're a corporate branding expert you'd probably be like all right well it doesn't hurt facebook i mean you know it's not going to get much worse so go for it that's what we're seeing that's a good point yeah not going to get much worse that's a really good point um all right so we've got facebook rebranding as meta and the reason why facebook says that is again going beyond everything etc and the metaverse is this huge uh hashtag of a word that has come out um particularly surrounding facebook this idea that you would have this be it this mixed reality virtual reality augmented reality space where you uh could exist with other people but facebook's focus seems to be surrounding kind of the business side of the metaverse can you talk about kind of what you know about facebook's um ongoing plans for the metaverse i know again a lot of this was just announced today but the rumors leading up to this surrounding the metaverse and uh zuckerberg's early conversations about it you might have some some insights there because i'm curious uh the kind of the consumer side of things for the metaverse and what we can expect but then also the business side of things and what uh what everyone can expect in terms of will there be ads flying at our face while we're trying to hang out with our sister from across the country well here's the most important thing the thing i think has been most overlooked is that and i think zuckerberg was so explicit about it today that we're no longer going to overlook it but facebook hates being subject to the whims of apple you know facebook and apple really don't like each other facebook doesn't like apple's fee it doesn't like the fact that you know apple it's subject to apple's rules and regulations in fact you know looking back you know that apple took facebook's internal uh apps offline because it violated some apple policy and facebook couldn't work for a day because of that so there's absolutely no love lost between cook and mark zuckerberg and what zuckerberg wants is a world where he's free of intermediaries that will mediate the relationship between him and his users and so why is facebook so taken with this idea for the metaverse something that you know basically has us living in vr and doing all of our computing there and it's because facebook controls the operating system and he was very explicit in his talk today talking about how um you know when it comes to the metaverse uh you know there there will be low fees it will be developer friendly you can sideload apps i mean it felt to me like a one hour long subtweet of apple's business practices and apple has come at facebook hard right they've also cut off the company's ability largely to target ads off of the app and to track people off the app which has really hit facebook's business although we didn't see it so bad in his earnings uh in this most recent earnings report uh and so you know facebook i actually broke news last week that facebook said it wants to have a knife fight with apple right and so uh this is the knife fight this is what we're watching it's two enormous two of the biggest companies to the most powerful companies that we have in this country and the worlds uh taking their knifes out and getting to stabbing and this is facebook's uh attempt to step back at apple that that makes sense yes there was uh as you as you put put it sort of a subtweet section where they were talking about how they see uh the metaverse existing and uh how it won't do this that and the other and all of the things that they were mentioning were all of the things that people criticize apple's app store practices about uh so that was interesting to see they brought on a um a creator or a creative i guess um who talked who they were talking to about doing sort of makeup and cosmetics in the metaverse and how people would pay for the privilege of purchasing products that would be exclusive to them in the metaverse and so we can kind of sort of picture that future uh but there was a huge focus on the business side of things too of of the the the space where we have uh corporate kind of creating metaverse spaces where people can go and work together and i'm curious if you think that um this is more of a result of you know our pandemic living or if the metaverse kind of always in the same way the hololens it started out as maybe it was going to be a consumer product and they realized that the microsoft's hololens was better for uh sort of the corporate area do we think that's the same thing here where eventually it would have been some sort of corporate technology um but they just got there faster because of the pandemic or what are just your thoughts in general on uh their focus uh on bus on the business side of things well i think that facebook did a good job setting expectations at the very beginning where they said this isn't stuff we're going to roll out right now it's not a typical developer conference we're really going to lay out our vision for the future and i think that's particularly important because you think about their vision for the future this is something that's going to not happen this year not happen next year but it might happen four five six seven ten years down the road vr technology simply is just not at the point where it's going to be something that people would rather get into virtual reality versus you know talking to somebody on a zoo or in person you know in person is still pretty cool i hate to break it to the folks of facebook but people still like the real world um and you know virtual reality like if it wasn't gonna if this stuff was gonna take off why didn't it take off during the pandemic we were all stuck at home it would have been amazing it's just the fact that the technology isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be so i think there is a a good case to be made that you know maybe five ten years down the line um we will maybe conduct some meetings in virtual reality you know maybe put on ar glasses and have some hologram of our co-worker beam in uh to the conference table with us but i do think that it's important in this discussion to just highlight the fact that it's going to take a long long time to get to get to this place and so you know i i personally you know we're here at big technology and you know we're we're tech forward we like to use tech in the workplace but i swear to you i'm not asking anyone to meet with me in virtual reality anytime soon yeah i'm not feeling that either and i and i actually really enjoy the virtual reality experience um one question i have about this i'm curious to know your take on this right now the vr that we know the vr that the metaverse as as zuckerberg kind of spelled out today runs on the quest and the quest to headset which runs on android which is owned by google um how important is it do you think for facebook to eventually build its own operating system to control its entire destiny here or is that even necessary what do you think about that it's a really good question um look i sat with mark zuckerberg and talked to him about this when i was reporting out always day one and he talked about the fact that you know a lot of um a lot of operating systems doesn't give you the control that you would like especially if you're a company like facebook to interact with your users in a way that you think is best so give you an example so zuckerberg told me that um the thing is with with apps with a phone operating system you pick um you you pick the app and then um you pick the the person you want you say you pick the action and then you pick the person you want to do it with in real life you pick the person first right hey let's hang this weekend and then you pick um the the action that you want to take so um so yeah so i think that like he wants that control obviously building on android allows you a much greater level of control than being an app on the iphone and for them the most important key is to have a paradigm shift where we go from using our phones to using virtual reality and as soon as we get there if they're controlling that number one headset sort of doesn't matter what the underlying operating system is as long as it allows them to customize and android will uh and so then that's that's a win for that i guess my last question for you is along with the shift in the name you mentioned there could be some other changes that take place at the company do we think anything else will happen outside of the name change as facebook continues to focus on the metaverse and uh sort of what's next in in social space yeah look i i thought there was a chance that chris cox was going to become who's the chief product officer facebook was going to become the ceo of facebook and mark zuckerberg mark zuckerberg was going to become the chairman ceo of meta uh that hasn't happened so obviously zuck still has you know full control and uh and you know outside of that there is some corporate like restructure or corporate re-emphasis that's going on reality labs is going to lead them into the future uh this week zuckerberg also talked about the fact that you know it's all about um you know focusing on young users and they don't care as much about boomers i'm paraphrasing but that was sort of the way he put it uh and so that's what the future for facebook is gonna look like it's gonna be about young adults if you look through some of those facebook papers you can see that facebook has a serious problem with the kids uh and so it's gonna work to fix that and then try to put this um you know reality labs the portal the uh the oculus and then augmented reality front and center but you know it's a risky bet because you know social media is a you know is live and thriving there's three and a half billion plus people that use facebook's family of apps uh much less using you know these devices so and and also less of a use case and less of an immediate payoff you know so the growth numbers will look good because you're starting from a really small base but overall it would be tough to to for them to turn their reality labs into the same blockbuster success as you know business wise at least that facebook has been and so what it gives us is another five years of extremely interesting stories and plot lines with this you know uh ever you know uh persistently compelling uh company and so here we go you\n"