Why Facebook is now called Meta

Facebook is no longer Facebook, now it's a goal. Or rather, Facebook, the social network, it is still Facebook, but the company behind this application, and from others as Instagram, WhatsApp or Oculus, is now called Meta.

The new name is not going to get you to stop the problems that the company is facing these days. The filtration of documents by an ex-employee has put against the ropes once again to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, by inconsistency when moderating the most extreme comments published in the social network. It is a policy that has played a key role in events such as the assault on the US Capitol. From January 6 or the rise of the antivacunas movement.

Although Facebook has been defended explaining that it takes action before the most extreme discourses, the filtered documents show that the company is aware of its inability to deal with the problem, reacts slowly before certain cases and is much more lax to now to apply measures of control to some means of communication and influential personalities.

But although he does not get diverting attention, the name change is not a whim. It is obeyed to a vision that Zuckerberg has tried to specify in a video of more than an hour and who has served as an exit pistolleta for Facebook Connect, an event focused on the progress of the company actually virtual.

This vision is that of "metaverse", a virtual reality that in the future will serve to connect people from all over the world in three-dimensional environments where they live shared experiences.

The idea is frequently repeated in novels and science fiction movies for half a century and in a certain way it is present in many digital products that already exist, like the Virtual World Second Life or the popular Fortnite video game.

The goal of Facebook is to further develop this concept and become the company that creates key products and tools for its evolution. "In the metaverse, you can do almost anything you can imagine: meet with friends and family, work, learn, play, buy, create, as well as completely new experiences that really do not fit in the way we think about computers or Telephones Today, "explains Zuckerberg on the goal blog.

The new name of the company does not represent a change in the organization. Goal, today, continues to depend on all of Facebook and Instagram and the enormous advertising potential of both. But the idea, in the long term, is to become "the metaverse company".

This strategy gives meaning to the purchase of the Oculus virtual reality company, by which the company paid more than 2,000 million dollars in 2014.

Unlike other acquisitions, as Instagram in 2012 and whatsapp in 2014, the purchase has not been able to significantly increase the number of active users or the potential audience for ads.

But if the future of the Internet resembles something to the vision that Zuckerberg has shown in his video, the company could benefit from being one of the first to move in this direction.

Facebook has already created several products to generate virtual avatars and hold conferences in three-dimensional spaces using virtual reality helmets, but a large part of the vision will require better visualization devices.

The company is already working on a new more compact and lightweight virtual reality glasses than the current Oculus Quest and that for now they are internally known as "Cambria Project".

These glasses will be able to move to virtual environments the movements and facial expressions or the direction of the look of whoever takes them, improving the non-verbal communication of the avatars.

The Nazaré project is known even less, but in essence it is an increased reality glasses. That is, glasses capable of superimposing virtual elements in the field of vision and mixing them with reality. It is a type of product in which it is also rumored that Apple is working and that Microsoft also already has in its catalog.

Zuckerberg, in any case, recognizes that the success of the metaverse will depend at a first moment of electronic leisure and during the presentation he has announced several new games for Oculus Quest. Until the vision of the metaverse becomes a reality, this will be the best way to take advantage of the current virtual reality systems.