Entrance to Meta( formerly Facebook)  headquarters complex  at 1, Hacker Way,  Menlo Park,  California, USA. Inset  CEO mark Zuckerberg announcing the  name change.
October 31, 2021: On October 28,  FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerberg  stated: "I am proud to announce that, starting today, our company is now Meta.”In a blog post, Zuckerberg said the name meta comes from Greek word means "beyond."
“We’ve gone from desktop to web to phones, from text to photos to video, but this isn’t the end of the line,” Zuckerberg said. “The next platform and medium will be even more immersive and embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it, and we call this the metaverse.”
"Zuckerberg presented a very ambitious vision for the Metaverse – with photorealistic avatars and spaces, EMG input (gestures, wrist movements), holograms and voice interactions that generate immersive virtual versions of work, play, socializing, shopping, traveling, etc.," Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian said, speaking to USA Today
Name changes: In 2015, Google created a new publicly traded parent company called Alphabet to house its disparate businesses. Philip Morris rebranded as Altria because of the association with its tobacco products.
No sooner had Facebook announced the name change, that jokesters unleashed on social media:
FAANG is now MANGA,” tweeted Steph Sher, referring to FAANG, an acronym for American tech companies Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (formerly known as Google).
Rick Horowitz tweeted: META: Mark Evading True Accountability.
The Facebook name change comes only days after the company came under unprecedented scrutiny for its  news selection alogorithms. See our  story here