By the way, why is Meta called Meta? – Numerama

To talk about the parent company of Facebook, we must now say Meta. But where does this name come from, and why did Mark Zuckerberg choose it?

The global company Facebook no longer exists: her name is now Meta, and encompasses all applications and companies such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger or even Oculus – whose brand is also disappearing to take the name of Meta.

” Meta’s primary goal will be to create the Metaverse and help people connect, find their communities and grow businesses. », Is it written in blog post presentation of the new name, published October 28.

the metaverse is the great project of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and now CEO of Meta: he intends to hire 10,000 new people over five years to develop this concept of a virtual world, an internet of the future in which we should evolve through avatars in 3D, using augmented reality.

Development will likely be long and expensive, and the company will have to do a good job to get rid of a somewhat old-fashioned image of the “virtual future” that she let shine through during her presentation.

Whether the Metaverse is working or not, Meta’s name isn’t likely to change anytime soon: the group has changed its name on all social networks as well as on the stock exchange, where its acronym will be MVRS (for metaverse) from December 1, 2021. But what does it really mean?

What does Meta mean?

In a short gif presenting this new brand, Facebook’s parent company shows how Meta is supposed to “encompass” all of the group’s other properties, like Instagram or WhatsApp.

“Meta” is a prefix that comes from the Greek: it can mean several things like going beyond, higher or greater. It is also a term used to characterize something that encompasses something similar, such as a self-reference (a metal book is a book about a book, for example, tells us Wikipedia).

In pop culture, the term “meta” is sometimes used in this sense (when a series uses private jokes for example, we can speak of meta references), but also to define a work that is aware of being a work (the series Community played a lot on this concept).

Facebook already had the Meta brand

It should be noted that the Meta name belonged in fact already at the multinational through the foundation of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chang, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It was already planned that the organization in “ transfers ownership to Facebook “. So it should not have been very complicated for Facebook (well, the former Facebook) to recover the mark.

Some Meta news –

“Meta” used to be a brand owned by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropy.

Meta, for unrelated reasons, is sunsetting. And so Facebook and CZI “entered an agreement to transfer those brand assets to Facebook.”

Full news. pic.twitter.com/v4zMxCdyao

– Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) October 28, 2021

The continuation in video