Facebook, the social community, will not outline the way forward for Facebook, the corporate that can now be recognized as Meta. Facebook Inc. is changing the name in an effort to distinguish its beleaguered social community, which has an more and more poor repute across the globe, from the corporate that’s pinning on the promise of a “metaverse.”

“Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future,” Zuckerberg mentioned. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first.”

Zuckerberg introduced the brand new identify throughout a digital (meta-virtual?) keynote for the corporate’s Facebook Connect convention. Under its new association, Facebook and its “family of apps” might be a division of the bigger Meta firm.

The restructuring bears some similarities to when Google restructured itself , the holding firm that now operates Google, together with its “other bets” like DeepMind and Nest. Facebook has already mentioned it plans to separate Facebook Reality Labs, its AR and VR group, from the remainder of the corporate when reporting its monetary efficiency.

Facebook is positioning the identify as extra reflective of its future ambitions to evolve from social community to . Zuckerberg nonetheless has but to obviously outline precisely what being a “metaverse company” means for its fundamental platform and customers, however augmented and digital actuality are central to the imaginative and prescient. The firm has already proven off an early model of 1 venture, referred to as Horizon Workrooms, that enables individuals to in VR. The firm additionally previewed new “Horizon Home” and “Horizon Venues” experiences. And, earlier this month, the corporate introduced plans 10,000 new employees in Europe in an effort to construct out its metaverse.

The identify change additionally comes at probably the most precarious moments within the firm’s historical past. The social community is reeling from the fallout of the a trove of inner paperwork collected by a former worker turned whistleblower. The paperwork have been the premise for a sequence of complaints to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in addition to the supply of greater than a dozen reviews concerning the firm’s failings to stem the tide of misinformation, hate speech and different harms attributable to the platform.

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