Why did Facebook insist on changing its name when it was clearly taboo? Two reasons for the change

Facebook changed its name to Meta, causing its stock to fall, but the concept of "metaverse" became popular again.

Unlike his previous ventures into VR and short videos, this time Zuckerberg directly changed the name of the company, as if he was determined to bet on the "metaverse".

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So why did Facebook change its name? What is the "metaverse"? What can it bring to Zuckerberg?

Active name change

One day, Zuckerberg's Chinese wife Priscilla Chan said to him: "Facebook's Chinese transliteration is '非死不可'. It will be difficult to enter the Chinese market without changing the name to something more auspicious."

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Zuckerberg asked curiously: "What do you think would be a better name?"

Priscilla Chan turned off Li Jiaqi's live broadcast and said, "How about calling it 'Buy it'?"

Just kidding, large companies rarely change their names, and even if they do, they are mostly forced to do so.

For example, New Balance has always been called "New Balance" in Hong Kong and Taiwan. When it entered the Chinese mainland market in 2003, it had to use the name "New Balance" because this name had already been registered in the mainland. In 2011, Microsoft acquired the instant messaging software Skype for US$8.5 billion, but because its trademark and name were too similar to those of the British Sky Broadcasting Group, it had to use another name.

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There are large companies that have taken the initiative to rename themselves, but they are extremely rare. A more famous name change occurred in 2018. In the early years, Wal-Mart's full English name was "Wal-Mart Stores Inc.". In order to be more in line with the company's consistent vision of "consumers can shop at Wal-Mart in any way they like", the word "Stores" was removed.

Unlike Walmart's purpose of changing its name, Facebook changed its name more because the name was "too rustic."

Facebook comes from the traditional paper "roster". Usually American universities and preparatory schools will print and distribute the roster to students and faculty in the school to help everyone get to know other members of the school.

Initially, Facebook was only used by students at Harvard College, hence its name. Later, registered users gradually expanded to other colleges and universities, and eventually successfully established a huge social network.

Zuckerberg never thought that a small "roster" could become a library. Wearing a winter coat and a summer hat is too inappropriate.

Compared to Facebook, "Meta" seems much more sophisticated and can be said to have seized the commanding heights of future naming.

We often hear "metaprogramming", "metadesign", "metaverse", etc. Meta is a prefix that can be connected to many nouns to generate new meanings.

In theory, all nouns can create sparks with Meta, making existing things more advanced. Alibaba can be said to be a meta-business, Apple can be said to be a meta-terminal...

Zuckerberg and the Metaverse

In July 2021, Zuckerberg stated that in the next five years or so, Facebook will transform from a social media company to a metaverse company.

In addition to Facebook, giants such as Google, Amazon, and Disney have also made strategic arrangements for the Metaverse. Tencent, a domestic giant, has also keenly sensed the opportunities of the Metaverse. At the end of 2020, Ma Huateng proposed the concept of "full-real Internet", saying that it can "go from real to virtual, helping users achieve a more realistic experience."

The concept of "metaverse" seems to have been favored by the capital market. Earlier this year, the gaming company Roblox went public on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the first company in the world to include the concept of metaverse in its prospectus, and was called "the first stock in the metaverse."

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There are examples of many foreign and domestic companies relying on the "metaverse" concept for financial financing.

So, what exactly is the “metaverse”?

The term "metaverse" first appeared in the novel "Snow Crash" by American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson.

In the book, Neal Stephenson describes a cyber world that is parallel to the real world. All people in the real world have a "cyber avatar" in the metaverse.

According to Roblox, the "first stock in the Metaverse", a true Metaverse product must have eight elements: identity, friends, immersion, low latency, diversity, anywhere, economic system and civilization.

In the Metaverse, everyone in the real world has a virtual identity and real or AI friends. Everything that happens in the Metaverse happens synchronously, without asynchrony or delay, and provides rich and differentiated content. Everyone can log in to the Metaverse anytime and anywhere, have a complex economic system, and create virtual civilizations and digital civilizations.

It can be seen that with the current level of human technology, such a powerful system is almost impossible to achieve, which is also the reason why the "metaverse" is controversial.

Facebook's dilemma and ambition

Facebook's name change reflects Zuckerberg's ambition and also reflects Facebook's current predicament.

In the era of mobile Internet, Facebook's development is much inferior to that of many Internet giants. Of course, it cannot be said that Facebook is out of date in the era of mobile Internet, but it seems that the gameplay has not been opened up.

Facebook has invested heavily in the era of artificial intelligence and has achieved many results in basic research. It also has big names like Yann Lecun in charge, but it has not been able to find a good landing point. Although AI can also help the company make money, its room for development is limited.

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Compared with the above two waves of technology, the pattern of the Metaverse appears to be very large. Facebook is very ambitious. Screen-based social networking, applications and other functions are indeed saturated. The saturation here means that everyone is building a platform, and after years of competition, there is really no great possibility of seeing new development opportunities. And AR/VR-based applications still lack platform-level companies and applications. Zuckerberg also said at the Facebook Connect conference that Meta will make efforts in various fields such as social networking, games, work, and education, covering all aspects of people's daily lives. The ambition is not small. From this point of view, what Zuckerberg wants to do is not just the game world of "Ready Player One" and "Gamer", but a larger community than this.