By Sabin Iqbal , Group Editor, TECHx Media
So, Facebook becomes Meta, and it claims to be the next chapter in technology that connects people in a world of ‘metaverse’. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last night announced that Facebook is no longer the company name but Meta.
“Today we’re seen as a social media company. Facebook is one of the most used technology products in the history of the world. It’s an iconic social media brand,” writes Zuckerberg in his new Founder’s Letter, announcing Meta.
“Right now our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards,” he adds.
“Building social apps will always be important for us, and there’s a lot more to build. But increasingly, it’s not all we do. In our DNA, we build technology to bring people together. The metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started,” he says.
Despite Zuckerberg’s insistence that the name-change is to focus on the company’s vision of building technology that connects people, the social media is rife with comments that the rebranding is an attempt to distract people from the increasing negative and anti-trust reports about Facebook, especially after a couple of whistleblowers have made public the internal documents which show how Facebook had turned a blind eye some sensitive issues.
It is interesting that Facebook has become Meta on the eve of International Internet Day, which is Oct. 29. In his original Founder’s Letter, Zuckerberg wrote: “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.” Much water has flowed under many technology bridges around the world, and ‘money’ has grown in its multifarious ways giving ‘services’ more meanings than just connecting people.
We moved and moulded our life in sync with the way technology advanced. We moved from writing letters to typing text to taking photos on phones, and once mobile phones with faster Internet became the norm, we began to share videos for better ‘experience’. Our sounds and images crossed borders and timezones bringing people and places closer.
Now, Zuckerberg promises us that the future will be more than just sharing our videos.
“The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build. The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence — like you are right there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this,” he says.
Zuckerberg claims that in the metaverse, “you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today”.
He says teleporting will become a reality in metaverse as one can move across different experience using different devices.
“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up. This will open up more opportunity no matter where you live. You’ll be able to spend more time on what matters to you, cut down time in traffic, and reduce your carbon footprint,” says Zuckerberg about the metaverse world his company is putting all its energy to build.
My father went to Abu Dhabi from Kerala when I was five years old—in the early 70s. A day after he took a flight from Thirvuananthapuram airport to Mumbai, then to Abu Dhabi, we used to get a one-liner telegram: ‘Arrived safely.” Then, after 15 days his first letter, describing the journey. There were times when there were no letters for a while. When the next letter arrived, we were informed that he was under the weather for more than a week.
In a metaverse, I could have visited him to give him some comfort!
