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Good morning, Marketers, not gonna lie. My bet was on OASIS, but I suppose Meta is just as close.
If you’re a Ready Player One fan, you know The OASIS was a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) where people go to escape reality and “live” online. It’s what I thought of when Facebook announced last week that it was planning on rebranding to highlight its role as a “metaverse.”
“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together — and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world,” said the announcement. One of the recent indications we were headed this way was their introduction of Horizon Workrooms where you can meet in-person, online via your avatar.
How well people accept things like Horizon Workrooms and Meta’s new direction is still up for discussion, but, spoiler alert, Ready Player One ends with everyone deciding to leave The OASIS and go live their real lives in the real world.
Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the tech company is renaming itself to “Meta” to encompass its expanding technology and role in what it calls, “the metaverse.” The company owns multiple technologies and apps including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus VR. In July, Zuckerberg told The Verge that over the next several years, Facebook would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
Why we care. The rebrand comes right as whistleblower revelations have Facebook under fire for its practices, morals, and social impact. It also begs the question if the metaverse will become a new frontier for advertising (especially as the Oculus has been testing ads in VR). But also, as marketers, we can’t look away from a branding fail and “Meta” just feels like one.
Read more here.