Is Meta replacing Facebook?

Facebook, now known as Meta after a major rebranding in 2021, has gone through many changes and evolutions since it was founded in 2004. With Meta’s increasing focus on building the metaverse and virtual/augmented reality technologies, there has been much speculation about whether these new priorities and platforms will eventually replace Facebook itself.

What is Meta and what are its goals?

Meta is the new parent company name that was adopted in 2021 by Facebook to represent its focus on developing the next generation of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. Meta’s overarching goal is to help bring the metaverse to life – a virtual space where people can interact, work, play, and connect in new ways using various devices, apps, and virtual/augmented reality hardware.

While best known for Facebook, Meta also owns other major platforms and apps including Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. However, Meta sees the metaverse and related technologies as the next frontier and is devoting significant resources to develop hardware, software, content, and infrastructure to enable an expansive, immersive metaverse.

What will the metaverse encompass?

The metaverse umbrella encompasses a variety of virtual/augmented reality experiences accessed via the internet and supported by various devices. Key components of Meta’s metaverse vision include:

Persistent virtual worlds – Ongoing 3D virtual environments that continue to exist and be accessible when you leave and re-enter.
Presence and embodiment – Having customized avatars through which you interact with the world and other users.

Interoperability – Being able to carry identity/items/history between worlds and platforms.
Economy – Virtual ownership, goods, services, jobs, transactions, etc. Users can create, own, invest, sell, and be compensated.
New interaction models – Moving beyond screens and inputs to more immersive physical interaction through VR/AR hardware.

Rich user experience – Multi-sensory experience incorporating sight, sound, touch, etc. for deeper immersion and connection.

The metaverse aims to weave these components together into a functioning network of diverse virtual worlds, services, and economies.

What steps is Meta taking to develop its metaverse vision?

Meta is undertaking an enormous, multi-year effort to research, engineer, and release the foundational components needed for its metaverse vision. Key initiatives include:

AR/VR hardware – Meta is developing multiple generations of virtual and augmented reality headsets, including Oculus Quest and Project Cambria.
OS/platform development – Creating a metaverse operating system and development platform for building connected virtual worlds and economies.
Content/world creation – Making massive investments in VR content, hiring creators, acquiring VR game studios, and developing Horizon Worlds.

Infrastructure – Building backend server capacity, connectivity, identity/account systems, payments, app distribution, and other infrastructure.
Research – Investing billions in Reality Labs for VR/AR research including social presence, human interface, perception science, haptics, computer vision, and neural interfaces.
Partnerships – Collaborating with other companies on metaverse apps, platforms, standards, services, and devices.

Bringing the interconnected metaverse to life will require major breakthroughs in both hard technology and human-centric areas. Meta is committed to advancing this long-term vision.

How does Facebook fit into Meta’s plans?

Facebook still plays a major role within Meta as one of the largest social platforms in the world. Meta sees Facebook as the gateway for transitioning billions of users into the metaverse over time.

Some key ways Facebook ties into Meta’s strategy include:

User base – Facebook’s billions of users represent the initial audience to engage about the metaverse and eventually migrate portions of their social interactions into more immersive virtual worlds and spaces.
Identity – Facebook accounts/profiles will be connected to metaverse identity systems so users can carry over their identity, friends, history, digital goods, and more.
Discovery – The Facebook app may incorporate metaverse discovery features and access points to help users find virtual events, worlds, games, and other content.

Community – Meta aims to let Facebook groups and communities exist simultaneously as 2D social feeds and 3D virtual spaces where users interact as customized avatars.
Technology – Facebook’s infrastructure provides the backbone for massive metaverse computing/networking needs and the company’s AI research applies to areas like avatars, computer vision, natural language processing and more.

Rather than replacing Facebook, Meta aims to evolve it into a portal leading billions of users into various metaverse experiences accessed through interoperable identities, accounts, apps, and platforms.

Will Facebook the app phase out over time?

Despite Meta’s major metaverse push, Facebook the app still appears poised to remain relevant for quite some time rather than completely phasing out. A few reasons for this include:

Massive user base – Billions of people actively use Facebook on a daily basis for social connection, news, entertainment, business pages, groups, messaging, and more.
Gradual adoption curve – Moving Facebook’s user base to the metaverse will take time given hardware limitations, learning curves, and willingness to adopt.

Complementary experiences – The metaverse is likely to complement rather than replace all aspects of social media for many users.
Established habits – People are deeply used to checking Facebook daily on their phones and shifting those habits will require new value propositions.
Demographic differences – Younger generations may adopt the metaverse more rapidly, while other demographics could use Facebook for years more.

Rather than disappearing, Facebook may evolve its app’s features to integrate more metaverse components over time, while still preserving the news feed, messaging, groups, and other core features billions rely on.

Could Facebook lose prominence under Meta?

While unlikely to disappear, Facebook could potentially lose some prominence and focus under Meta if metaverse platforms gain strong adoption over 5-10 years. A few ways Facebook could lose stature include:

Less corporate focus – Meta may devote more resources/talent to metaverse development vs. evolving Facebook’s core app.

Platform fragmentation – User attention and time could fragment across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and various metaverse platforms.
Emergence of new hubs – New virtual worlds could evolve into social hubs rivaling Facebook if they reach critical mass.
Demographic shift – Younger users may gravitate to metaverse experiences over time if they resonate.

Reduced prominence in branding – Facebook branding may get overshadowed under the Meta parent brand as new platforms launch.

However, Facebook is still likely to remain quite relevant given its broad adoption across age groups, geographies, and use cases. But it may no longer dominate the overall social media landscape to the degree it has in recent years.

Could Facebook be rebranded or repositioned?

With Meta focused on the metaverse, there has been some speculation that Facebook the app could potentially be rebranded or repositioned in some way. Possible options might include:

New brand – Facebook gets renamed to shed legacy associations and signify its evolution.
Integration – Facebook gets integrated as a feature within a larger social app encompassing Meta’s other platforms.
Segmentation – Facebook splits into multiple apps with different target user segments.

Interoperability – Facebook acts as an interoperable hub bridging users across Meta’s family of apps and metaverse worlds.
New platform focus – Facebook app pivots to a specific use case like business pages, groups, events, messaging, or a hybrid mix.

However, Meta has given no indication of plans to rebrand or reposition Facebook itself. With billions of active users, it remains core to Meta’s current and future plans. Any major changes would likely be gradual evolutions versus sudden shifts.

How might Facebook’s business model and revenue be impacted?

Facebook generated over $118 billion in revenue in 2021, making it a massive business. Its revenue stems predominantly from advertising driven by its ability to target ads based on robust user data and insights. As Meta shifts focus to the metaverse, there are several potential impacts to Facebook’s business model:

New revenue streams – VR hardware sales, virtual goods/services, creator monetization, commerce, and more could arise from metaverse platforms.
Diminished ad targeting – Apple privacy changes and evolving regulations may hinder Facebook ad targeting capabilities over time.

Reduced share of user time – Facebook’s ad views and impressions could decrease as people spend more time in non-Facebook virtual worlds.
Emergence of VR ads – Facebook/Meta may develop ads within AR/VR experiences, but these will take time to scale.

Facebook is likely to remain highly profitable for many years given its entrenched user base. But its long-term advertising dominance could face headwinds as Meta’s focus expands across the metaverse and privacy restrictions increase. New business models may need to complement advertising revenue.

Could Facebook usage and popularity decline?

As Meta focuses more on the metaverse, there are possibilities of Facebook usage declining among particular demographics over time:

Younger users – Younger age groups like teens and young adults may gradually shift more interactions to compelling new metaverse worlds and apps.
Adoption laggards – Older demographics may be more likely to retain Facebook usage while being slower to adopt new technologies like VR.

Regional differences – Uptake of VR hardware and services could vary significantly by country and region depending on infrastructure, costs, and other factors.
Hardware barriers – Lack of affordable VR/AR access could limit adoption of metaverse experiences for lower-income demographics.

Facebook’s entrenched position and billions of existing users should sustain strong usage and popularity for years. But metaverse platforms could start to draw more incremental user time, especially amongst early-adopting generations.

Conclusion

Rather than replacing Facebook outright, Meta aims to evolve it into an interconnected gateway linking users to the broader metaverse. Facebook’s core app still seems likely to remain relevant for the foreseeable future given its widespread adoption and entrenched user habits. But its prominence, focus, and usage patterns could shift gradually as innovative metaverse platforms arise. Meta is playing the very long game, so the ultimate impacts on Facebook likely won’t be clear for many years. But Facebook will likely remain a vital on-ramp for transitioning users into Meta’s vision for the next generation of social connection.