Mark Zuckerberg has a new job, he’s the CEO of meta, the new parent company for Facebook. That was part of the expected announcement Zuckerberg dropped on Thursday at Facebook’s annual conference.

During the conference Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the metaverse – a digital world built over our own. According to Meta’s CEO, the metaverse will consist of virtual reality headsets and augmented reality and is much more encompassing for the tech giant’s brand than just continuing to call it – “just” Facebook.

“We believe the metaverse will be the successor of the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said.

Billions of dollars have been directed into building the metaverse, a vision, or version, of the internet much like Snow Crash and Ready Player One.

“I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now… meta. Our mission remains the same, it’s still about bringing people together. Out apps and their brands, they’re not changing either. And, we are still the company that designs technology around people.Facebook is one of the most used products in the history of the world … but increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything we do. Facebook is one of the most used products in the history of the world … but increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything we do,” he said during Thursday’s event on LIVEstream.

The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. It’s a collective project that will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone. You’ll be able to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what’s possible today, Facebook said in a Tweet after their annual conference.

Think of the meta verse as the internet brought to life, or in 3D. Zuckerberg has explained it as a “virtual environment” you can go inside of — instead of just looking at on a screen.

“Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future,” Zuckerberg said.

Facebook has more than 10,000 employees already building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg says will someday be as accepted and widely used as smartphones.