By Andrew Bosworth (Boz), Facebook/Meta
Well the cat’s (officially) out of the bag: Our company is now Meta to better reflect who we are and our ambitions to help build the metaverse. Our org will become Reality Labs and our work is a key part of that future.
We’re focused on human connection and bringing people together. And we’ve believed in the power of new technologies to transcend space and time since our inception. The last 18 months have only strengthened our conviction. Allowing people who are physically apart to share experiences as if they were together in the same place is incredibly powerful. That’s what the metaverse will be about.
Today I want to share publicly why we made these brand decisions for the company, what it means for my organization, and where we go from here.
Reality Labs
One year ago we changed our org name from AR/VR to Facebook Reality Labs as a way to encompass the expansive work we do. We’re updating our name again to Reality Labs for the very same reason — to better make the connection that our org is building the technology that will enable the future metaverse.
While our org name is changing, our mission remains the same: “to build the tools that help people feel connected anytime, anywhere.” When we wrote this mission statement, we wanted to ensure it reflected our work but was flexible enough to grow alongside our org. And it has — even as we’ve expanded to include new teams like Metaverse, AI, Workplace, and Developer Platform and expanded our scope and remit.
Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll cascade these name changes to Reality Labs Research and other teams, as well as to our internal and external sites.
Realigning our product branding
We’re bringing our brands and products closer to Meta, which is the umbrella for all our products and services. When people buy our products, we want them to clearly understand that all of these devices come from Meta and ladder up to our metaverse vision. That’s why we’re evolving our brand across our current lines of hardware in-market, as well as for all future products, in order to bring more consistency across the portfolio and more transparency to consumers.
VR will be the most immersive way for people to access the metaverse and as we look toward our goal of bringing 1B people into VR, we want to make it clear that Quest is a Meta product. For this reason, we’re simplifying our brand architecture and shifting away from the Oculus brand for our hardware. Starting in early 2022, you’ll start to see the shift from Oculus Quest from Facebook to Meta Quest and Oculus App to Meta Quest App over time.
We all have a strong attachment to the Oculus brand, and this was a very difficult decision to make. While we’re changing the brand of the hardware we are still going to use it in software around things like developer tools and studios. I can assure you that the original Oculus vision remains deeply embedded in how Meta will continue to drive mass adoption for VR today.
We’ll also expand Meta Horizon as the brand that will encompass all of our first-party immersive social experiences. You’ve seen this already with Horizon Workrooms and Horizon Worlds. Soon you’ll see us shift from Oculus to Horizon Home, Horizon Venues, Horizon Friends, and Horizon Profile.
As we’ve focused more on work, and as we’ve heard feedback from the VR community more broadly, we’re working on new ways to log into Quest that won’t require a Facebook account, landing sometime next year. This is one of our highest priority areas of work internally.
Over the next few months, you’ll see a phased rollout of the brand across all the relevant products and services — including Facebook Portal to Meta Portal. This shift from one brand identity to another is not a trivial one, and it must be done thoughtfully to ensure brand equity and transparency.
What’s next
It is daunting to think of how much work there is to achieve the metaverse vision we laid out at Connect. But I am comforted when I think of how much progress we have made over the last four years that I’ve been working with this team. That work laid the foundation for the broader metaverse vision that we are now focused on as a company. Not much will fundamentally change for our work or our deliverables in the near term, but over time this will serve as a unifying force.
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