At the Facebook Connect 2021 digital conference, presented by Mark Zuckerberg. The big news was the name change announced of the Facebook holding company name. The new name Meta has replaced Facebook as holding company name. The apps Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, What’s App, and other Facebook-owned companies Facebook-owned will now come under the new name of the holding company.
At the same time as the name change, it also announced a change in direction of products to the existing apps it was announced. Zuckerberg’s idea for Meta is to create products in the augmented reality and visual reality markets. From the presentation, it was clear to see that Zuckerberg has identified the opportunity to grow Meta in this area and has strategically positioned the company in this direction.
The new product explained at today’s Meta name announcement was something of an extension of Meta called the Metaverse. The Metaverse as a product concept is a VR cross over between an online meeting platform and CGI animation. Basically, meeting colleagues or friends online while being for your favourite amination character in VR virtual locations.
Meta now has the weight to push behind VR and go for market dominance. Even though reaching this objective of delivering the product Metaverse is years away from happening. How Meta will deliver a Metaverse for people to use is still unclear. A cross over of online meeting platforms and CGI does seem to be the natural step forward bring new online communications consumer demands and the growing VR industry together.
The announcements in the presentation can only scratch the surface of what will happen in the future. The same is not true looking at the past at Facebook as a holding company. There have been parts of Facebook history that have caused chaos for the company. Data and privacy concerns have a damaging effect on its integrity. Competition from other social media platforms and changes in users’ demographics are all negatively affecting Facebook.
New branding of the holding company and the kind of products in the pipeline would suggest some sound strategically thinking given the current marketing condition. What Zuckerberg expects from these announcements is that Meta maintains the VR transformation in the same Facebook dominated the social media transformation. To keep Zuckerberg concerned companies as the top performers and keep ahead of competition get Meta has supremacy in digital communications.
Robert Fogarty 