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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, changes its name and stock symbol to "MVRS," Zuckerberg's founder's letter full translation

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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, changes its name and stock symbol to "MVRS," Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg: "From now on, we will prioritize the metaverse over Facebook."

Meta

Earlier reports suggested that Facebook would be rebranding by the end of the month. Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in a founder's letter on 10/29 that the parent company of Facebook will be renamed to META. He emphasized that the metaverse is the next frontier for the platform, much like social networks were just emerging over a decade ago. The summary is as follows:

  • Rebranded as Meta, stock ticker: MVRS to change on 12/1
  • Subsidiaries Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp names remain unchanged
  • Metaverse will not be built by a single institution, but will be co-created with developers
  • Support for NFT products
  • Introduction of a new governance mechanism
  • Plans to sell metaverse infrastructure at cost or with subsidies

Integration of Payments and Financial Products into Novi

David Marcus, Head of Facebook Financial, F2, mentioned the Facebook rebrand on Twitter and announced that F2 will be renamed to Novi. He stated:

We have various financial and payment products, such as Facebook Pay and Novi wallet. Over time, we have decided to integrate existing and future payment and financial services under Novi, with F2 also being renamed as Novi. Our mission remains to enable global access to the financial system to promote financial inclusivity and economic empowerment.

Crypto Community Perspectives

Zhu Su, Founder of Three Arrows Capital

Zhu Su believes that FB/Meta/Zuckerberg will lose competitiveness in the metaverse race. He stated:

His advantage lies not in culture or products, but in political factors, acquisition of competitors, and lobbying capabilities, all supported by fat cat investors. His approach is not influential in the metaverse world.

Jack Dorsey, Co-founder of Twitter

Jack Dorsey seems unimpressed with the rebranding to Meta, tweeting:

Meta refers to itself, or its consistent style; self-referential.

In fact, the term "metaverse" originated from the 1992 novel "Snow Crash" by author Neal Stephenson, describing it as a virtual world owned by a single entity where inhabitants suffer under the dictatorship of a dystopian corporation.

Crypto Twitter user udiverse21 previously mentioned similarities between Facebook's metaverse construction and the novel and questioned: "What if Neal was right?" To which Jack Dorsey promptly replied: "Narrator: He was." This helps understand Jack Dorsey's tweet today, which is essentially mocking the reflection of "Meta" term indicating Facebook's autocratic rule.

Twitter's official account also posted a tweet mocking this.

Full Translation of Zuckerberg's Founder's Letter

We are at the beginning of the next chapter of the internet, and this is also the next chapter for our company.

Over the past few decades, technology has given people the ability to connect and express themselves more naturally. When I founded Facebook, we mostly typed on websites. As we got camera phones, the internet became more visual and mobile. With faster connections, video became a richer way to share experiences. We've gone from desktop to web to mobile devices; from text to photos to videos. But that's not the end.

The next platform will be even more immersive: a physical internet where you can experience it, not just watch it. We call it the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.

The defining quality of the metaverse will be presence: feeling like you're really there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That's why we're focused on building it.

In the metaverse, you can almost do anything you can imagine: hang out with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create, and experience entirely new things that our current computers or phones can't even imagine. We made a video exploring how you might use the metaverse one day.

In this future, you'll be able to teleport to work as a hologram, attend a concert with friends without commuting, or chat in your parents' living room. It will bring more opportunities no matter where you live. You'll be able to spend more time on what matters to you, reduce commute times, and shrink your carbon footprint.

Think about how many physical items you own today that might become holograms in the future. Your TV, the perfect workstation with multiple displays, board games: they won't be physical items made in factories, but holograms designed by creators from around the world.

You'll experience these on different devices: augmented reality (AR) glasses can overlay in the real world, virtual reality (VR) can fully immerse you, and phones and computers can access from existing platforms. This won't make us spend more time on screens, but make the time we already spend better.

Our Role and Responsibility

The metaverse won't be built by one company. It will be built by creators and developers, creating interoperable new experiences and digital projects, unlocking a larger creative economy than today's platforms and policies restrict.

Our role in this journey is to accelerate the development of foundational technologies, social platforms, and creative tools to bring the metaverse to life, leveraging our programming expertise from our social media applications. We believe the metaverse can offer a better social experience than anything currently in existence, and we are committed to helping realize its potential.

As I wrote in the founder's letter: "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services."

This orientation has been helpful to us. Our business has been used to support very large and long-term investments to build better services, which is what we plan to do here.

Over the past five years, I and our company have been ashamed in many ways. One of the main lessons I've learned is that building products people love is not enough.

I increasingly believe the internet's story is not straightforward. Each chapter brings new voices and ideas, but also new challenges, risks, and disruptions to established interests. We need to work together from the start to make the best version of this future a reality.

Privacy and security need to be built into the metaverse from the beginning. Open standards and interoperability are also crucial. This requires not just novel technical work: supporting cryptocurrency and NFT projects in the community, but also new governance forms. Most importantly, we need to help build an ecosystem where more people have stakes in the future, benefiting not only as consumers but also as creators.

This time has been frustrating, as a large company, we also understand what it's like to develop on other platforms. Living under their rules has profoundly influenced my view of the tech industry. I began to believe that consumer lack of choice and high fees for developers are stifling innovation and hindering the internet economy.

We're trying a different approach. We want as many people as possible to use our services, which means working to lower costs, not raise them. Our mobile apps are free. Our ad model is designed to offer the lowest prices for businesses. Our business tools are offered at cost or moderate fees. As a result, billions enjoy our services, and millions of businesses rely on our tools.

This is the approach we want to take to help build the metaverse. We plan to sell our equipment at cost or with subsidies so more people can use them. We'll continue to support loading and streaming from PCs so people have a choice, instead of forcing them to use the Quest Store to find apps or reach customers. Our goal is to provide developer and creator services at low cost in as many cases as possible, so we can maximize the impact of the overall creative economy. However, we need to ensure we don't lose too much money in the process.

Within the next decade, we hope the metaverse will reach 1 billion people, carry hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce, and provide employment opportunities for millions of creators and developers.

Who We Are

As we begin the next chapter, I've thought a lot about what this means for our company and identity.

We are a company focused on connecting people. While most tech companies focus on how people interact with technology, we've always focused on building technology so people can interact with each other.

Today, we're seen as a social media company. Facebook is one of the most widely used tech products in world history. It's an iconic social media brand.

Building social apps has always been important to us, and there's still much to build. But increasingly, it's not all we do. In our DNA, we've built technology to bring people together. The metaverse is the next frontier of connecting people, much like social networks were when we started.

Our brand is now only associated with one product, and it can't possibly represent all we do today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope we're seen as a metaverse company, positioning our work and identity around the goals we're building towards.

We've just announced fundamental changes to the company. We now view the business as two distinct parts and report on them: one part being the suite of apps, and the other the work on the future platform. Our work on the metaverse is not just one of these parts. The metaverse encompasses social experiences and future technologies. As we broaden our vision, it's time for us to adopt a new brand.

To reflect who we are and the future we want to build, I'm proud to announce our company is now Meta.

Our mission remains the same: still bringing people together. Our apps and their brands haven't changed. We're still a company that designs technology around people.

But all of our products, including our apps, now have a new vision: to help bring the metaverse to life.

Now we have a name that reflects the breadth of the work we do.

From now on, we'll be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. This means over time, you won't need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts to appear in our products, I hope people around the world will understand the Meta brand and what we represent for the future.

I've studied classics, and "meta" comes from Greek, meaning "beyond." To me, it symbolizes that there's always more to build, and the story always has the next chapter. Our story started in a dorm room and went beyond our imagination; into a series of apps where people use those apps to connect, find their voice, and embark on ventures, communities, and actions that change the world.

I'm proud of what we've built so far, and I'm excited about what's next: because we're going beyond what's possible today, beyond the limits of screens, distances, and physical constraints, towards a future where everyone can come together, create new opportunities, and experience new things. It's a future beyond any one company, created by all of us together.

We've built something to bring people together in new ways. We've learned lessons from struggling with societal problems and living on closed platforms. Now it's time to use everything we've learned to help build the next chapter.

I'm all in for this: more than any other company in the world. If this is the future you want to see, I hope you'll join us. The future will be beyond our imagination.