This week Facebook announced that it's looking to change its name to better reflect its future ambition to build the "metaverse" — a virtual space where people could play games, interact, socialize and work.
Pulling an Alphabet (which Google changed its name to in 2015) is an interesting move, and it underlines how serious Zuckerberg is about Facebook's future in virtual spaces (although everyone we know still calls Google Google).
It means that Facebook's future competition might not be Snapchat, TikTok or Twitter, but gaming companies like Roblox and Fortnite, that already have a "metaverse" of sorts that is hugely popular with young people.
Roblox is the $45bn company that lets users create and monetize their own games for anyone to play.
Last quarter Roblox users spent almost 10,000 million hours on the platform. Almost half of that time was spent by kids under the age of 13, but Roblox is increasingly targeting an older, and wider audience.
Most of that time was spent playing games, but in future it might be broader — like attending virtual music festivals or just socializing more generally — which would bring it into Facebook's path.
MetaFace
Facebook already has 10,000+ employees working on building consumer hardware products, whether that's low-key smart glasses like its collaboration with Ray-Ban, or full virtual reality experiences through its brand Oculus, which it acquired in 2014. Both of those efforts will presumably fit into the grand metaverse plan in some way.
It's first mainstream metaverse product might be a long way off, but the name change supposedly isn't. Any takers for Facebook's new name? MetaFace? FaceMeta? Zuckerverse?
