Facebook announced this Thursday (28) that it will change the name of the company that brings together its different platforms to Meta, reflecting the company’s effort to build a virtual world full of avatars known as metaverse, while fighting an increasingly public relations crisis. deeper and increasing scrutiny by regulatory bodies.
The names of the company’s social networks, which in addition to Facebook itself include Instagram, WhatsApp Messenger and Oculus, will not change. The corporate structure will not be changed either.
The company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said this Thursday (28), during a live augmented and virtual reality conference, that the new name reflects the group’s focus on building the metaverse.
“Right now, our brand is so closely tied to a product that it can’t represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future,” he said.
“From today, we’re going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first,” he said.
The metaverse, a term first coined in a dystopian novel three decades ago and now taking the spotlight in Silicon Valley, refers to the idea of ​​a shared virtual environment that can be accessed by people using different devices.
Facebook, which has invested heavily in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), including buying companies like Oculus, aims to connect its nearly 3 billion users through multiple devices and applications.
Using technologies like virtual and augmented reality, Facebook plans to create a greater sense of “virtual presence” that will mimic the experience of interacting in person.
Zuckerberg believes the metaverse would be accessible in VR, AR, personal computers, mobile devices and game consoles.
The company plans to create 10,000 European Union jobs over the next five years to help build the metaverse, while competing with Apple and others to build the next-generation computing platform.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, wrote on a blog that no company will own or operate the metaverse. “Bringing this to life will require collaboration and cooperation between companies, developers, makers and policy makers,” he wrote.
The company said on Monday (25) that as of the fourth quarter of this year it intends to release the results of its Facebook Reality Lab unit, which builds augmented reality, virtual reality and metaverse products, separately from the rest of the company.
In a Monday revenue statement, Zuckerberg said the metaverse will be “the successor to the mobile Internet.” Facebook hopes to attract another billion users and “hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce a day” over the next decade, he added.
Experts say that the metaverse could be the future of the internet, allowing the user to enter a wider virtual universe, connected to all kinds of digital environments, whether to watch a show or a movie, work or just relax.
On Thursday, the company announced new metaverse, RA and RV functions and designs, and tried to reassure users that privacy and security will be part of them. These include “Horizon Home”, an app designed to allow users to socialize as avatars in an imaginary shared home while using their Oculus virtual reality gear.
Facebook also said it is going beyond its current avatars, which look like cartoons, and developing more realistic ones that mimic and follow users. Zuckerberg indicated that cryptocurrencies and NFTs (non-fungible digital tokens representing artwork and other collectibles) will be part of the metaverse vision.
The company has also released a set of tools called Presence to help developers build mixed-reality experiences for the metaverse, and an app called Polar to help creators more easily build augmented reality filters for photos and videos.
The group president said that “lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation” for developers using existing operating systems, in an apparent criticism of Apple and Google, whose app stores charge commissions of 15 to 30 % on digital products.
Facebook intends to charge low fees “in as many cases as possible” to developers and creators who use its metaverse-related services, he said.
Facebook has already committed $50 million (R$276 million at current quote) to build the metaverse and test a new teleworking app where Oculus Quest 2 headset users can hold work meetings as avatar versions of themselves .
For the company, however, the world still needs another 10 or 15 years for the idea to start taking shape in a more concrete way.
At Thursday’s event, the company even unveiled a new sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., replacing its thumb-up “Like” logo with an infinite blue shape.
public scrutiny
The group’s name change comes amid criticism the company faces from lawmakers and regulators about its market power, its algorithmic decisions and the policing of abuses on its platforms.
Facebook is facing a deluge of scrutiny after former employee Frances Haugen accused the company of deepening polarization and constantly putting profits ahead of the safety of its users.
Numerous news outlets, including the Financial Times, have obtained edited versions of thousands of documents Haugen has provided to regulators and the US Congress, offering insight into the inner workings of the company.
Facebook said in a regulatory document on Tuesday (26) that it has become the target of US government investigations and requests related to the former employee’s allegations involving algorithms, advertising and user metrics, and content restriction practices, “as well as misinformation and other undesirable activities on our platform, and the well-being of users”.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Federal Trade Commission has begun analyzing Facebook’s internal research, in particular on whether the company’s platforms – in this case, especially Instagram – have exacerbated teenage mental health problems, to assess whether she had violated a $5 billion deal with the federal agency in 2019 over privacy issues.
Facebook also confirmed that it instructed employees on Wednesday not to delete documents. “Requests to preserve documents are part of the process of responding to legal inquiries,” said Joe Osborn, a Facebook spokesman.
The company’s shares have fallen more than 16% since the WSJ began reporting called Facebook Papers in mid-September.
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