When Facebook acquired VR headset startup Oculus for $2B in 2014, founder Palmer Luckey wrote on Reddit, “I guarantee that you won’t need to log into your Facebook account [to use the Oculus Rift].”
By 2020, he was wrong.
Today, it’s pretty clear Facebook wants 2 things: To rule — ahem — to help build the metaverse, and to keep you on Facebook while doing it.
A reported rebrand at the company’s Connect conference next week could set that in stone (and if Zuck is lucky, possibly deflect attention from the myriad controversies swirling around Facebook).
The future is so meta
Zuck has said people will eventually view Facebook as a metaverse company. He’s invested heavily — like, super heavily — in the metaverse at work.
The company already has 10k+ people building AR products, and last week announced plans to hire 10k metaverse engineers in Europe.
But even with 20k people working on “Ready Player One: Oasis,” if your name is Facebook, people see you as Facebook — hence the rebrand.
As for the name, Zuck already owns meta.com and meta.org. The former redirects to the latter, which is a website for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (the couple’s charity).
While Metaberg isn’t there quite yet…
… virtual worlds are coming. Last year, 30m+ people attended a Lil Nas X concert performed entirely within Roblox.
When Zuck bought Oculus, he said it loud and clear: “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”
Next week, maybe we’ll get an update on how that’s going.
