Facebook Is Changing Its Name to Meta and Social Media Users Are Already Roasting It
Facebook is officially changing its name to Meta.
On Thursday (Oct. 28), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the big announcement during Facebook's annual Connect event. The company's name will changed from Facebook to Meta, though Facebook the social media app will remain known as Facebook.
“We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said during his keynote speech. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”
Zuckerberg said that he plans to create the "Metaverse" — essentially virtual communities where people can work, play games in augmented reality, shop, and connect via social media VR headsets and smartphone apps, among other futuristic technological activities.
Zuckerberg plans to reach a billion users with the Metaverse in the next 10 years.
The Twitter handle @Meta has been created and verified but is private at the time of this article's publication. The CEO also owns the domain Meta.com, which currently brings visitors to a Facebook landing page.
In the first Meta blog post, the company's plans for a community are described as a "hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world." They promise immersive experiences, education and work resources, and the company pledges to donate a "$150-million investment in immersive learning to train the next generation of creators."
Social media users had a field day with the big announcement, most of which were hilarious puns or roasts of Facebook's rebrand considering how controversial the company has become.
"Facebook's new company name is Meta," one user wrote. "It still has all the same problems it had this morning."
See some of the best social media reactions, below.