into the metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg stars in surreal metaverse presentation before announcing company rebrand

Say goodbye to "Facebook," as least when it comes to the social media platform's company name. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is heading into the metaverse. 

In a presentation on Thursday, Zuckerberg outlined his vision for a future built around the "metaverse" and announced that Facebook will be changing its company name to "Meta" to reflect its new focus on virtual spaces. Zuckerberg said that while social media apps will "always be an important focus" for the company, the name Facebook is too "tightly linked to one product." The rebrand comes as Facebook has been facing a major public relations crisis after a whistleblower came forward to allege the company puts profits over users' safety. 

"From now on, we're going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first," Zuckerberg said. "That means that over time, you won't need to use Facebook to use our other services." 

Throughout the slightly-trippy presentation, the CEO pitched multiple concepts for this metaverse-driven future, in which "you'll be able to step beyond the physical world" by putting on a pair of glasses. After showing himself moving into a virtual "home space" and then sitting at a virtual table with a group of friends, Zuckerberg promised that "you're going to really feel like you're there with other people" and that virtual avatars will eventually become "as common as profile pictures today."

While acknowledging all of this is still a "long way off," Zuckerberg also said that in the metaverse, users will be able to "make things happen by thinking about them," "teleport places with people," and "send a text message just by thinking about moving your fingers." One example showed two people playing chess in real life while one of them appears as a hologram. Check out some of the footage below, and watch the full presentation here.