Recently Facebook changed its name to Meta. This podcast explains why this is a good thing for the company both when communicating, and as part of its strategy.

Meta is really 3 extremely important platforms.  Facebook the website, which is the most popular website in the world. Instagram, which challenges YouTube as the most popular video site.  And WhatsApp which is the biggest platform for texting, calling, and meeting in the world.  Together these 3 platforms account for 40% of all internet traffic in the world.  No joke.  All are owned by Facebook, and it was confusing to lots of people when you mentioned Facebook to understand if you were talking about the platform or the company. So this change in company name is indeed clarifying, and valuable.

Secondly, as we've introduced in our "4 Big Trends for this Decade" increasingly communications are asynchronous, and utilize a fair bit of AI.  Meta is now pushing toward a future where you can communicated even if you aren't there - by using AI to understand what's happening and provide responses. By using smart platforms we don't can overcome limitations of email, texting and phone calls and zoom to be intelligently responsive even when it is not convenient.  This is a terrific benefit to productivity, and improves communications at a time when we all need to move quickly.

Further, by communicating through platforms rather than 1-to-1 historical patterns we can project much better who we are. No longer limited by our appearance, background, voice intonallity and other physical characteristics we can portray ourselves however we want.  This allows us to maximize our value, rather than trying to fit some kind of mold.  We can operate in a meta sphere which is not limited by who we physically are, or where we are located.  We can move beyond these limits, much as Stephen Hawking did, to provide our maximum value.  And this, too is a good thing.

Thinking points:
- Are you using these platforms to improve your communications, or do you still rely on historical tools?
- Are you developing the ultimate "you" by adding AI to your personal processes and interacting through meta tools?
- Are you maximizing the value of your organization's people by promoting greater use of meta-tools in how they do their work?

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