On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a major announcement that it is changing its corporate name to “Meta.” The word “meta” has Greek origins and it means “beyond.” The company mentioned the new name at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference. The name has connotations with its future as it is planning to expand beyond social media and create a metaverse using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Zuckerberg said that the company’s name Facebook is limited to one product and that it is much more than that one product although it is closely linked to the product and that he hoped that they would be seen as a “metaverse company.”
Zuckerberg also said that the company believed that the “metaverse” would be the successor to the mobile internet.
Zuckerberg already had rights to the Twitter handle @meta as well as the website meta which now links a browser to a welcome page. This page on Facebook outlines the changes that have been made. He has also said that they would start trading on December 1, using the stock ticker MVRS that the company has already reserved. The company stock rose by 3 percent after the announcement was made.
The famous thumbs-up sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park has also been changed. The new name “Meta” has a new logo as well. It is also in blue but looks like a pretzel or an infinity sign, depending on how you see it.
The company had teased the sign earlier, before its official reveal. It had been covered with a canvas that had the iconic Like or thumbs-up icon. A tweet on Wednesday had also briefly captured artists painting the new logo.
