Facebook? That's META to you now.

Well here is a blog I didn't see coming. Facebook, one of the most recognized brands in the history of existence, announced today that it will be changing its name to "Meta".

Unveiling of the new Meta logo (photo credit Washington Post)

This is an effort from the Metaverse overlord himself Mark Zuckerberg to focus the companies' growth strategy towards the "Metaverse" which to many is still a very abstract concept.

This is a wild move from our boy Zuck to flip the book upside down when it comes to brand recognition from a marketing perspective.

Or is it?

How many people even have heard of the Metaverse before this move today? How much news is this going to get now covering the name change, how many memes are we about to see about this on Twitter?

And most importantly- it will get people more curious about what the underlying technology is and likely provide Meta with "the first mover" advantage for this whole new ecosystem of technology.

Facebook (or should I say Meta now? Idk man this is gonna take some time) has been making moves towards enhancing the virtual reality experience for some time now.

Earlier this year they partnered with Ray-Ban to design Ray-Ban Stories Smart Glasses- which aim to bring elements of your smart phone or computer right to your glasses while maintaining that slick Ray-Ban look (I'm a Wayfarer guy myself).

Idea here is also you can take pictures right with your glasses without needing to take your phone out

They also have been seeing increased sales in their Oculus product, which is a clear stepping stone to grow adoption into the Meta-verse. As a matter of fact, Oculus itself DOUBLED the total revenue for Facebook's non-advertising revenue at the end of last year, and since then it has been more on the fore-front for where the company looks to spend most of its time from a strategy perspective.

I guess I owe the BonkerBeat faithful a deep-dive blog post into what the Metaverse is, and why Zuck is so fired up about it. Look for a Beat-drop later this week on it, should be a fun one.