Facebook Changes Name to Meta in Embrace of Virtual Reality (3)

Facebook Inc. is re-christening itself Meta Platforms Inc., decoupling its corporate identity from the eponymous social network mired in toxic content, and highlighting a shift to an emerging computing platform focused on virtual reality.

“The metaverse is the next frontier,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a presentation at Facebook’s Connect conference, held virtually on Thursday. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”

The name change is the most definitive signal so far of the company’s intention to stake its future on a new computing platform -- the metaverse, an idea born in the imaginations ...