Hello, Meta

On Thursday, Facebook CEO, mark Zuckerberg, announced a change of name for the giant tech company from Facebook Inc., to Meta. Barely a few hours and days later, Meta has taken the world by storm, attracting a plethora of criticism and applause alike. Proponents to the change welcome the name, citing it a welcome move, signifying the company's aspirations to diversify its operations and detach one of its products, Facebook, from being recognized as the sole identity of the company that has now grown big and diverse in operations. By existing under a new name, Meta, which is inspired by the need to create a metaverse of virtual environment driven by Virtual and Augmented reality, can now liberate itself into the future as an all-inclusive platform thriving on new and improved technologies.

Facebook, which also owns major platforms such as Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, needed to evolve from just a social media Platform–which younger generations are already starting to sidestep in favor of more trendy platforms such as TikTok–to a futuristic company capable of developing innovative products riding on its own platforms and informed by market trends. This gesture could be interpreted as a business continuity move where for the sake of survival, a company has to evolve by improving its products and incorporating compelling flagship features and projects based on research and development. Meta's move largely reads from Google's script where the latter renamed to Alphabet in 2015, in a bid to distinguish Google as a subset of other products offered by the internet giant.

Notwithstanding, Meta's new look won't shake off Facebook's woes and controversies it has accumulated over the years. Facebook has long been accused of data privacy irregularities, misinformation and disinformation, radicalization, and election interference, amongst other ills. One popular example is the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal that attracted both the US and other governments' inquiries. Meta will therefore, need to cleanse Facebook's negative image whilst setting stage for a clean slate devoid of regulatory woes and social ills it has been accused of in the past, as is cited of Instagram.

Moving forward, expect Meta to be an elaborate platform that will change the face of technology in the coming decades as the world establishes emergent technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and 5G, amongst others. Meta's vision reminds me of the movie "Ready Player One" (a must watch for techies) which futuristically anticipates a human race deeply embedded in the intricacies of virtual environments. Whether Meta fulfils this dream or not, remains to be seen.