Facebook to Meta - Part 1
Abraham George Macro Musings
Finally, Mark Zuckerberg has realized how much the public hated the name Facebook and changed it to Meta. But why the name Meta?
Officially, It will be known as Meta Platforms Inc. It will be a daddy company to Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. Remaking oneself as a platform company has become very trendy these days akin to adding dotcom to your name in the late 1990’s.
Zuckerberg is a unique entrepreneur who thinks really outside the box. He came on the world scene as a person to only serve humanity and give everything for free. Eventually, he created a business where he has an enviable audience of 3.5 bln (plus all their personal information) from day one for any product that he launches. He has an annual revenue of $85 bln through all his platform companies. So to spend 10 to 15 bln dollars for R&D and quirky ideas is no big deal.
Metaverse is not a common word that we use in our vocabulary of words and for that matter many of us may be even hearing it for the first time. This is something Zuckerberg had entertained in his mind even before Facebook was conceived. This is what he said at Facebook’s annual developer platform with a lot of enthusiasm and passion, “we’ve gone from desktop to web to phones, from text to photos to video, but this isn’t the end of the line. We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile Internet”. Zuckerberg added, “Over time, I hope our company will be seen as a metaverse company”.
So actually, what is this Metaverse? Glad you asked. It will be a massive dose of VR (virtual reality) space where you can hang out, play games, buy stuff. Well, mostly it’s buying stuff.
Probably, the concept takes its ideas from dystopian sci-fi novels and movies where the real world has become such a terrible place that everybody needs to be transported to a virtual one.
Dystopian is not a common word that we use. It is the diametrical opposite of utopian. By the way, the sci-fi novel ‘1984’ was written in 1949 by George Orwell. That’s 70 years ago. Can you see some of those predictions unfolding now? Movies like Hunger Games and Avatar are examples of movies that present the dystopian world.
As I highlighted in my sequel writings of ‘Gutenberg to Blockchain’ this is all part of Web 3.
By renaming the company to Meta, Zuckerberg will be distancing himself from Facebook a company that has been accused of genocide, hate speech, human trafficking, organ sales, targeting children - basically everything that sucks.
Mark said, “Building the foundational platforms for the metaverse will be a long road. Later, in this decade is when we would sort of expect this to be more of a real business story”. Here is a long video where Mark introduces the metaverse. If you are interested in the technology, it is worth watching
So, metaverse is for real and Zuckerberg has put his full weight and faith behind his original creation Facebook by renaming it to Meta. There are people still who don’t believe in autonomous vehicles becoming main stream. The truth is it is going to happen whether you believe in it or not. Actually, you can safely believe in metaverse becoming mainstream, as at least you don’t have to fear a a driverless vehicle will kill you.
In the subsequent episodes, I will discuss the ethics, morality, practicality and productivity of such a technology in our lives.
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Abraham George is a seasoned investment manager with more than 40 years of experience in trading & investment and portfolio management spanning diverse environments like banks (HSBC, ADCB), sovereign wealth fund (ADIA), a royal family office and a hedge fund.