Happy Nice Mall

But for me the most interesting question is: Why? Is Mr. Zuckerberg doing this? After all, this isn’t the start of a massive corporate restructuring or a sign of a CEO looking to give himself an easier job, as was the case when Google changed the Alphabet name in 2015 and Larry Page handed over daily control. Google to Sundar Pichai. While some would argue that Meta’s rebranding was designed to distract from Facebook’s latest scandals, it’s odd to think that announcing a radical plan to reinvent the digital world would generate critics. little is skeptical of the company’s goals.

Understanding why Mr. Zuckerberg did everything helps to understand why a successful metaverse pivot could help solve at least four big, challenging problems Facebook faces in the terrestrial world.

I have the first written beforeFacebook’s core social media business is getting old, and younger users are abandoning its apps in favor of TikTok, Snapchat, and other cooler apps. Facebook’s youth problem has yet to take its toll financially, but ad revenue is a lagging indicator, and there’s plenty of evidence that even Instagram, the supposedly healthy app in Facebook’s portfolio, is rapidly losing the attention of teens and twenties.

If current trends continue, Facebook is the bleakest version of what it could be in the next few years – a full Boomer-dominated mud pit. cute animal videos and extreme partisan trash — clearly not the kind of thing the company wants as a flagship product. (Mr. Zuckerberg endorsed a clear youth-focused strategy this week, saying the company’s new focus is on attracting and retaining young users.)

If Metaverse encourages teens to wear Oculus headsets instead of watching TikTok videos on their phones and hang out on Facebook’s social VR app Horizon, it could help the company’s demographic crisis.

Another issue Facebook’s metastore strategy can address, if it works, is platform risk. Mr. Zuckerberg has been angry Because Facebook’s mobile apps run on iOS and Android, its success is largely due to Apple and Google, two companies whose priorities are often diametrically opposed to theirs. For example, Apple’s “app tracking transparency” changes this year dealt a blow to Facebook’s advertising business by making it harder for the company to collect data about users’ mobile activities. And if smartphones continue to be the dominant way people interact online, Facebook will never truly be in control of its own destiny.

Mr. Zuckerberg has been talking about the strategic benefits of metadatabase since at least 2015. when you write “We need to succeed in building both a large platform and important applications to improve our strategic position on the next platform,” he told his lieutenants.