What is Meta? Meaning explained
SINCE Facebook rebranded in 2021, the word "meta" is far more frequently heard and used.
When founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes, he vowed to create a "new internet" - but what does the new name mean?
What is Meta?
Meta is the name given to Facebook in October 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was rebranding.
During Facebook's Connect keynote speech, Zuckerberg stated that the word Meta better represents the company now.
The billionaire said: “We are a company that builds technology to connect people.
“Facebook was born at a specific time, a college campus, the web. Increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything we do."
What does Meta mean?
Meta derives from the Greek μετά - which has a large number of meanings.
Some of these include "with", "after", "beyond" and "alongside".
Metaverse means a virtual-reality space where users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.
The term "metaverse" was first used by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Snow Crash.
The novel explores two parallel worlds - reality and the online virtual world.
Most read in The Sun
Why did Facebook change its name?
Zuckerberg believes the Facebook name no longer reflects what the company is doing nowadays.
Zuckerberg said: “Right now our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possible represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future.
“This isn’t about spending more times in screens. It’s about making the time we already spend better."
The term metaverse refers to shared virtual world environments which people can access via the internet.
This includes virtual spaces that are made lifelike through technology such as virtual reality or augmented reality.
The future of the internet is leaning towards the conceptions of metaverses, which are shared 3D virtual spaces.
Reportedly, Facebook formed a team earlier in 2021 to focus on creating their own metaverse.
The company openly talked about adding over 10,000 high-skilled jobs across the European Union over the next five years in order to build virtual and augmented reality experiences.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
The massive communal cyberspace would allow avatars to step in and out of different activities and universes, all online.
The announcement comes just weeks after a worldwide outage that knocked its services, including WhatsApp and Instagram, offline for seven hours, costing him an estimated $7billion.