Metaverse: A catch-all term for what comes after the current incarnation of the mobile web. If you have seen the movie Ready Player One and their metaverse was called the OASIS where they meet and experience the web.

Metaverse’s origin, as a word, is an unfortunate choice for Facebook as the word Metaverse was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. This book is about a dystopian future world in which everything is run by mega-corporations where the Metaverse was an escape from the horrors of daily life.

The general public sees Zuckerberg’s brand change as a desperate attempt to change the conversation. But, if Zuckerberg can pull this off then his legacy could be the father of the modern MetaVerse instead of being the source of FaceBook’s ongoing privacy issues. There are bills that are currently making their way through Congress that could potentially make the company spin off newly acquired WhatsApp and Instagram which is not a great look.

As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide and 60-ish percent of these people access Facebook at least once per month. 73-ish% if you add other FaceBook assets such as Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. If anyone can pull off building a mainstream and casual(non-gamer-specific) MetaVerse at scale it may be FaceBook. Their user base is already the majority of the world’s internet users so they are way ahead of the game.