Facebook changes name to Meta to highlight virtual reality shift

Facebook is changing its name to Meta – a move that decouples its corporate identity from its social network, which has been under increasing fire. 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. “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. “This is one of the lessons I’ve internalized from the last five years – that you really want to emphasize these principles from the start.” Andrew Bosworth, the longtime executive who has been overseeing Meta’s AR and VR products since 2017, has been tapped to take over as chief technology officer in early 2022, a role that includes overseeing the company’s development of the metaverse.