For the first time in 17 years, Mark Zuckerberg has a new job title.
On Thursday, he officially became the CEO and chairman of Meta, the new parent company name for Facebook. The rebrand is about solidifying the social media giant as being about the metaverse, which Zuckerberg sees as the future of the internet. Zuckerberg is staying in control of everything. He told me in an interview that, unlike the founders of Google who stepped aside in 2015 when it became part of a holding company called Alphabet, he has no plans to give up the top job.
Instead, the change is about recognizing a shift inside the company thatโs already taken place. Zuckerberg has been pouring billions of dollars โ at least $10 billion this year alone โ into building the metaverse, an expansive, immersive vision of the internet taken from the pages of sci-fi novels like Snow Crash and Ready Player One. โI think weโre basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,โ he told me this week over the phone. While details are slim, a unified account system is going to be introduced to span all of the companyโs social apps, the Oculus Quest headset, Portal, and future devices. That means you wonโt need a Facebook account to use the Quest.
The rebrand to Meta, announced by Zuckerberg today at the companyโs annual Connect conference, has been a clandestine affair since he formally kicked off the project just over six months ago. The small handful of employees involved had to sign separate nondisclosure agreements, and Zuckerberg refused to tell me the name itself when we spoke the day before Connect. He said he had been thinking about rebranding the company ever since he bought Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014, but earlier this year he realized that it was time to make the change.
โI think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps,โ he said. โI think itโs helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that.โ
Zuckerberg knows that the timing of this rebrand is suspect. Over the past few weeks, the company has been hit with a nonstop barrage of criticism, thanks to leaked internal documents provided to the media by a former employee named Frances Haugen. Facebook is perhaps the most scrutinized company in the world right now, and its brand has soured in the eyes of young people. To the many critics, distancing the company brand and Zuckerberg from the name Facebook will be seen as an evasion tactic.
According to Zuckerberg, the current cycle of bad news โhad nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think thatโs sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.โ
The metaverse as an idea isnโt new, but it wasnโt thrust into the mainstream conversation until Zuckerberg started talking about it publicly earlier this year. The concept originates from Snow Crash, a dystopian novel from the 1990s in which people flee the crumbling real world to be fully immersed in a virtual one. While he acknowledges that the origins of the word are a โcon,โ Zuckerberg is trying to reclaim the metaverse as a utopian idea that will unlock an entirely new economy of virtual goods and services.
In the next decade, he thinks most people will be spending time in a fully immersive, 3D version of the internet that spans not just Metaโs hardware such as the Quest, but devices made by others. Heโs pushing his teams to build technology that could one day let you show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar, or appear as a hologram of yourself in the real-world living room of your friend who lives across the planet.
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What is the metaverse?
It depends who you ask, but it usually refers to an array of interconnected digital spaces, sometimes in VR, sometimes experienced through a social network, and sometimes including real-time reference points to the physical world. You can read more about it here.
Heโs careful not to get into details, but he believes there will be a โpretty important roleโ for crypto technology like NFTs and smart contracts in the metaverse. โOne of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, โDo I really get to own this thing?โโ he told me. โโOr is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?โ And Iโm pretty sensitive to that given all the pressures that weโve had to try to navigate around censorship, and whatโs the definition of something thatโs harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something.โ
The software underpinning Zuckerbergโs take on the metaverse is called Horizon. Itโs part Minecraft meets Roblox with an application for work collaboration as well. Next year, the company plans to introduce Project Cambria, a high-end, mixed reality headset previewed at Connect that mixes virtual graphics with the real world in full color. It will have face and eye tracking to allow for more realistic avatars.
Also in the works is a pair of AR glasses called Nazarรฉ. While they are still several years out, to Zuckerberg they have the potential to be as widely used as mobile phones are today. The idea is that, unlike a VR headset that takes you out of the real world, Nazarรฉ will look like a normal pair of glasses with displays capable of overlaying computing onto the world around you. โThese products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today,โ he said. โAnd I think just having a different identify for that is important.โ
Itโs unclear if this rebrand to Meta will achieve what Zuckerberg is aiming for, but thereโs no question that itโs a bold move. The company is facing down new social media competitors, frustrated government regulators, and a new generation of potential users who view its core app as far from hip. The metaverse offers Zuckerberg a substantially new, maximalist direction to move toward. Now it needs to get to work.
Below is a transcript of my full interview with Zuckerberg. It has been edited for length and clarity:
Alex Heath: Can you explain why youโre doing this rebrand?
Mark Zuckerberg: At a high level, we did this segment reporting change on Monday as part of earnings. So weโre now looking at our business as two different segments. One for the social apps and one for future platforms basically. And the idea is that the metaverse work that weโre doing is not about any one of those segments. Itโs not like Reality Labs is doing the work building the metaverse. It goes across all of this. The metaverse is going to be both future platforms and social experiences.
So we wanted to have a new brand identity that, as you reported, is directionally aligned with the future vision that weโre working towards. Thereโs sort of a higher-level brand identity goal and then thereโs a more technical and functional goal. The higher-level piece is that Facebook is the iconic social media brand. And increasingly weโre doing more than that. People think of us as a social media company, but the way we think about ourselves is that weโre a technology company that builds technology to help people connect with each other. We think that makes us different from the other companies because everyone else is trying to work on how people interact with technology, where as we we build technologies so that people can interact with each other.
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For us, it was never just about social media, and increasingly weโre moving beyond that. It felt like having the brand of the company be tied to the idea of social media and one of the specific products that weโre building there โ because we now have Instagram and WhatsApp growing to be really important as well โ felt increasingly like it didnโt encompass everything that we were doing. So we wanted to shift that to have something that is more evocative of the vision that weโre moving towards.
On a more functional and technical basis, I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps. When people wanted to go sign into their Quest, we wanted them to sign in with their Facebook account because we wanted to have a single identity or account system for the company. Google has that, Apple has that. Microsoft has it. But for us, the issue is that if youโre signing into Quest or WhatsApp or Instagram with a Facebook account, I think that there was a confusion about, โAm I signing into this with my Facebook corporate account or is this going to be tied to my social media account?โ People had concerns on Quest. โIf I donโt want to use Facebook or if something happens and my account gets deactivated, is my device now going to get bricked?โ Thatโs a concern that I think people shouldnโt have to have. People had concerns that, โIf I sign into Instagram with this or if I sign into WhatsApp with it, does that mean that my data is somehow gonna get shared over here in a way that I didnโt want?โ
I think itโs helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that. So from a functional perspective, I thought it was very important to have that. And as I looked out several years towards launching something like Nazarรฉ, these products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today. I think just having a different identify for that is important.
When I thought about when was the best time to try to make that shift, itโs kind of like as soon as possible once you realize that you want to do that. So thatโs what led us down this path. Weโve been thinking about it for a long time. I formally kicked off the project earlier this year. It was a little over more than six months ago. But this is a debate that weโve been having for a long time inside the company, about whether we should do this. Itโs something that Iโve been working with Alex Schultz on very closely since he became the CMO.
Is there a restructuring component of this functionally with how the organizations report to people as well? Or is it more just the brand?
Zuckerberg: Thereโs the financial reporting and segment reporting. There is the brand. There will be the account system. Weโre not making org changes today as part of that. That might be something that Iโll consider in the future, but I donโt think thatโs something thatโs near term on the horizon.
You said you started this formally about six months ago. Is it at all a reaction to the brand baggage and the brand tax you guys sometimes refer to internally that Facebook has, and just wanting to distance from that? Or is it really more just looking ahead? I have to imagine itโs a mix of both.
Zuckerberg: We started well before the current cycle [of bad news]. I think the current cycle clearly had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think thatโs sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.
I think sometimes you just have to keep pushing forward. Thereโs a lot of different aspects and attributes of these brands. Thereโs obviously all these good and bad attributes that people ascribe to social media overall, and Facebook in particular. And these are conversations that we sort of had inside the company I think going back to, like 2014, ever since Instagram and WhatsApp joined and we became a family of apps. There was a little bit of an inherent awkwardness to having the company named after one of them. I never really considered it when I thought the primary thing that we were doing was social media, because Facebook was and still is the iconic social media brand. So it always felt a little odd to me to have a brand that was supposed to stand for social media and take Facebook out of that slot and put something else in. That felt a little odd. I wasnโt sure what job that would be doing.
But now I think the next chapter of what weโre doing is coming more into focus. And I know that a lot of people are gonna have questions like the one that you asked. To what extent are we running towards something versus running away from it? And I guess all I can say is that, to me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something. And that this is a vision for the future that weโre really excited about and that weโre committed to and weโre really going for. I wouldnโt have wanted to do this if that wasnโt in my heart how I felt about what we were doing.
I know that people will kind of ascribe a lot of different reasons, and obviously thereโs different pros and cons of doing different things. But that was a basic litmus test for me. I wasnโt gonna let us do this if I didnโt feel really strongly about the thing that we were anchoring our brand on and how we were going to move forward.
Do you think it helps with internal morale and recruiting as well, if youโre looking ahead and youโre trying to reposition how the company is thought of in the valley and where youโre hiring from?
I think thatโs an interesting question. My guess is it will help with some people, but it might also be different for some people. So Iโm not sure. Weโve had this conversation for several months now since Iโve signaled that I wanted us to become a metaverse company and be seen in this way. And Iโd say, overall, the sentiment is definitely positive internally about it. I think more people are very excited about it.
But I think itโs also really important to our team, and frankly itโs important to me, too, that we continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps. A lot of people come to Facebook today because thatโs what they want to go do. And I think itโs really important to people that we are paying attention to that going forward. Billions of people use our products and we need to make sure we keep doing that well. But I do think it should be exciting to people. I think, in general, the best people want to work as part of big missions. I certainly think that the metaverse as the next chapter of the internet is going to be really exciting to a lot of the right people. I think weโre clearly positioned as a company that has the most ambitious vision and the deepest commitment and investment in this area.
Is part of this at all about setting up a way for you to change your role at the company in the coming years? Do you still see yourself as CEO and chairman in, say, five years?
Zuckerberg: I think probably. I donโt have a specific date how long I want to be doing this for. I guess what I could say is Iโm very excited about the next chapter of what weโre doing. So I really want to go do that. So yeah, I donโt have anything more to add on that. I wouldnโt look at this as part of a plan to move in that direction.
Because you know youโre gonna get the Alphabet comparisons.
Zuckerberg: Yeah, I think itโs a fair question. I guess what I can say is that really isnโt what weโre doing here. I think this is more about just signaling our commitment to this vision and focusing on it, setting up a new brand architecture for the company so that way all people who use our products can have a relationship with the company that is separate from their relationship with the apps. Iโm very excited about what weโre building. And Iโm pretty young. I have a lot of energy. But certainly at some point Iโm not [going to be] running the company. Thatโs not really what this is about, though.
It sounds like youโre implying that thereโs going to be a new unified account system across everything?
Zuckerberg: Youโll have a Facebook account and youโll have an Instagram account. Youโll also have an account with the company thatโs the top level. So that way if you donโt want to use Facebook, you donโt have to. One interesting analogy here is I think weโre basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first. I feel like this is in a way like when Microsoft went from being Windows first to cloud first.
There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.
So I think itโs about being able to pick and choose which of the services you want to use and know that, no matter what happens to your Facebook account or your Instagram account, youโre still going to have all the content that you bought in VR or all your virtual goods. You can set up an avatar and it can be tied to one of those accounts or could just be tied to your overall identity across the different family of apps. And you can use it in all these places if you want. I bet thatโs going to be pretty powerful.
Is the whole metaverse push also tied at all to the work on young adults and teens? Kids love Roblox. They love Fortnite. Is that a part of it, too?
Zuckerberg: Itโs not the primary part of it. I do think itโs important to clarify that when Iโm talking about what our north star demographic here is, weโre talking about young adults 18 to 29, not primarily teens and certainly not primarily kids. But like college and post college, thatโs sort of historically been the strong base for us. And generally it continues to be a strong base. But I think itโs really important that as so many more people use all our products, that we donโt lose sight of that.
The median age of the people who use our products gets older. As we try to make our services better for everyone, I just want to make sure that the quality doesnโt drift for young adults. What Iโve basically told every team is whenever youโre building anything now, whether youโre working on feed ranking or youโre building groups or youโre designing Reels or video or Marketplace, keep in mind especially whatโs going to be important to young adults. Letโs say youโre building Marketplace. What young adults need to buy and sell is probably different from what people who are later in their life need to buy and sell. So there are just all these different ways that I think the products will shift to going in that direction.
And that certainly goes for everything that weโre going to be doing around the metaverse, too. Thatโll be the north star demographic, the hero demographic, that we keep in mind. But a lot of what weโre talking about is probably nearer term than metaverse will be. I think the work weโre doing on the metaverse will be very exciting over the next few years, but I think so much fundamental stuff has to get done that I donโt think itโs really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.
We face a lot of competition from TikTok and iMessage especially now, as well as a bunch of others that have been around forever โ YouTube, Snapchat. But TikTok and iMessage are growing incredibly quickly. So I think in terms of our focus on the apps, and Facebook and Instagram in particular, that I think is going to be a bigger thing over the next one to three years. Whereas the metaverse work I think will be a little further out in terms of actually reaching a ton of people.
The term metaverse. Iโm thinking about it originating from Snow Crash and that dystopia that it originates from and the context of that term, does that concern you at all? Itโs kind of funny that it originates from people trying to flee the real world into a virtual one because the real one is crumbling. Is that something you thought about at all when you were thinking about leaning into the word?
Zuckerberg: Yeah, I think thatโs certainly a con of it. But I think it means more than that. Obviously, the book has this whole environment around it thatโs sort of negative. But I donโt think it has to be that way. I also think that as these technologies develop, they take on different connotations and metaphors. I would be very surprised if five years from now the main association that almost anyone had with the metaverse was about the initial mention of it in Snow Crash. What itโs going to mean to people is going to be all the use cases that they have in there and what theyโre able to do with it.
Iโd actually be interested to look at what the earliest mentions of the internet were. People called it the information superhighway and stuff. None of that was was super negative, but it was pretty odd when compared to how we think about it today. I think that these things are always more dynamic. I didnโt want to be deterred from using what seemed like the clearest and most logical term that matched what we were building because of some negative connotations that some people have. Itโll take on more meaning than that.
A part of Connect that interested me was you talking about crypto and new forms of governance in the metaverse. Are you working on supporting NFTs? It seemed to me like you were thinking about DAOs. Iโd be curious to know what you think of that and smart contracts in general?
Zuckerberg: I donโt have anything to announce on that right now. But hereโs what Iโd say. The projects that weโve done around Novi, I do think weโve been the most forward leaning of the big tech companies around this space. So clearly weโre interested in it and generally supportive of the space and think that thereโs an important role for it to play in the future.
One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, โDo I really get to own this thing? Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?โ And Iโm pretty sensitive to that, given all the pressures that weโve had to try to navigate around censorship and whatโs the definition of something thatโs harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something. All that becomes a lot more sensitive when thereโs money and ownership, people pay for something. They just really want to know that their thing isnโt going to be taken away.
I do think that thereโs a pretty important role, whether itโs the current way that people are thinking about NFTs or just ways to do decentralized entitlements across the metaverse. I donโt think that thereโs going to be only one system. But I do think that thereโs an important place for more decentralization across that. As more of our projects become more mature, then weโll have more to talk about in that space.
Iโm wondering if you think that Facebook has faced so much scrutiny because of how it controls the flow of speech and because thereโs just natural tension there, and people donโt like that sometimes. Or because of how top-down it is, where people have little say in how it runs or an ability to make money on the platform? I think a lot of the media scrutiny operates with the assumption that youโre not stopping enough of the bad. Or that, on the more extreme end, any bad means the platform is net negative.
Zuckerberg: I do think, in general, the last five years have been a big learning period for me and the company. There were a lot of issues that weโve just had to build much more sophisticated programs around, whether thatโs around building AI systems to identify proactively all these different kinds of harmful content and act on them, building a much stronger privacy program, a lot more with encryption, all of these different things.
A lot of these are things that we cared about much earlier in the company and had some programs around, but we really kicked a lot of them into high gear after 2016. I think some of that was spurred by some of the scrutiny and then just us being introspective and saying, โHey, I do think we should build stronger programs here.โ Now, in general, Iโm very proud of what we built there. I think itโs difficult problems and youโre balancing complex social equities between things like free expression and trying to address harmful content. Itโs impossible to ever do both perfectly. And I think that the ideal answer probably isnโt to just lean in one direction fully or the other. Itโs to try to balance it. So then you end up not making anyone particularly happy. But I am genuinely proud of the work that weโre doing there. Itโs an industry-leading effort. I think anyone whoโs serious acknowledges that. The investments and results far exceed the sophistication of anyone else.
But still, when youโre talking about building a new ecosystem, I just think it would undoubtedly be better to build these things in from the beginning this time. Weโre pretty serious about that. So the question of what are the principles. Privacy is a really important one. And so is it safety, especially if youโre in such an immersive environment. You want to be able to say, โHey, this person is bothering me. I need to get out of here quickly, or I want them to disappear to me.โ So there are all these different dynamics that we basically want to embed in the foundation of it. Interoperability is another. Itโs been disappointing, the level of interoperability today on the mobile internet. So hopefully we can do better in the next one.
Good luck!
Zuckerberg: I donโt know. One thing that Iโve talked about over the years is building these platforms around people instead of apps. I do think thereโs something to this where, if the atomic unit of this system is itโs like an embodied internet and youโre in it and the atomic unit is you have your avatar and your digital goods. And the different apps arenโt completely different things. Theyโre just different spaces that you can teleport to.
I think thatโs an architecture that should be fundamentally more amenable to interoperability, as long as you build the right standards in from the beginning, than one where the atomic unit like our mobile platforms today is apps. And the assumption is that every app is a completely different environment and you start from nothing in each one. So I do think that thereโs something about how you design these things and make it more people-centric that either leans more or less towards that. So weโll see. But I think itโs going to be good to try to build some of these things in from the front.
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