Facebook Inc has changed it’s name to Meta in an effort to safeguard it’s brand and enhance social connection.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, who made the announcement today at the company’s annual Connect conference, the new brand encompasses who they are and what they hope to build.

The name change is only for the company and will not affect the Facebook social media platform.

“Our mission remains the same, still bringing people together and our personal brands are not changing,” Zuckerberg said while announcing the change.

Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg was also quick to address the issue the of privacy and safety, which has often put Facebook in bad light particularly in the area of data privacy.

“Privacy and safety need to be built in the metaverse from day one,” he said.

Metaverse, an expansive, immersive vision of the internet taken from the pages of sci-fi novels like Snow Crash and Ready Player One. In Snow Crash, a dystopian novel from the 1990s, people flee the crumbling real world to be fully immersed in a virtual one.

According to the CEO, the brand Meta is helping build a future where people have more ways to play and connect in the metaverse.

The Metaverse envisions a technology that could one day let you show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar, or appear as a hologram of yourself in the real-world living room of your friend who lives across the planet as Zuckerberg demonstrated in videos that have since been circulating online.

The metaverse will also have technology that allows the hybrid work model that has been touted to be the future of work more realistic.

Next year, the company plans to introduce Project Cambria, a high-end, mixed reality headset previewed at Connect that mixes virtual graphics with the real world in full colour. It will have face and eye tracking to allow for more realistic avatars.