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The Facebook Group is giving itself a new name. The umbrella company over services such as Facebook or Instagram will be called Meta in the future, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday. With the new name, Zuckerberg wants to direct the focus on the new virtual environment “Metaverse,” in which he sees the future of digital communication – and also of his company. The online platform Facebook itself and subsidiary services such as Whatsapp and Instagram will keep their previous names.
Meta will serve as an umbrella for all these offerings and more. “Our apps and their brands will not change,” Zuckerberg said. “Our mission remains the same, it’s still about bringing people together.”
Group founded in 2004
Zuckerberg also wants to use this to lead the group more out of the shadow of its original and previously most important platform, Facebook. In addition to Instagram, the group of companies also includes the chat apps WhatsApp and Messenger. Zuckerberg founded the U.S. group in 2004 and built it into the world’s largest Internet network. “We’re seen today as a social media company, but at our core we’re a company that connects people,” Zuckerberg said.
According to the 37-year-old Facebook founder, physical and digital worlds are to come together in the “Metaverse.” On the one hand, Zuckerberg is relying on virtual reality (VR), in which users can immerse themselves in digital worlds with special glasses on their heads.
The Facebook Group bought the company Oculus, a pioneer in glasses for displaying virtual reality, back in 2014. The Oculus name on the glasses is now being phased out and replaced by Meta.
However, the Facebook founder also sees so-called augmented reality (AR), in which digital content is superimposed on the real environment for the viewer on displays or with the help of projector glasses, as a “metaverse” building block. “We believe the ‘Metaverse’ will be the successor to the mobile Internet,” Zuckerberg stressed.
At the company’s Connect developer conference, Zuckerberg gave the most detailed description yet of his “Metaverse” concept. He said it will be a virtual world that you can immerse yourself in even more deeply, down to the facial expressions of the people around you. “Instead of looking at a screen, they’ll be in the middle of these experiences.”
The sense of being on the ground is the defining feature of the “metaverse,” he stressed. “When I send my parents a video of my kids, they will feel like they are with us.” It initially remained unclear what technical means beyond VR headsets would be used to implement this presence effect.
The group is expanding its virtual “Metaverse” worlds under the name “Horizon.” Zuckerberg announced “Horizon Home,” a new, more “social” home for users of VR goggles. However, the area looks very similar to the home screen that users already find today. What is new is that they can use rooms and virtual objects beyond the limits of individual games or events.
- source: krone.at/picture: facebook.com
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