Facebook planning to change its name as it becomes more than a social media company
Facebook - the social media company that owns Instagram and WhatsApp - seems done with its household name. According to a new report, Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook is planning to change its name to something that will show the company’s commitment towards building a sort of metaverse of services. Simply put, Facebook does not want to be known as just a social media company anymore and the identity change might be its best bet.
As reported by The Verge, citing people privy to the development, the plans for the name change could be the centre of Mark Zuckerberg’s address at Facebook’s annual Connect conference, slated to take place on October 28. This may mean the rebranding may happen within October. A different identity for Facebook, however, will not directly affect users because Facebook is still likely to continue as a social media platform. The main purpose, as highlighted in the report, will be to shun the social media label and be rid of all the controversies with the new name.
The name change will bring Facebook’s app under a parent company, which will also oversee Facebook’s services, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus. And beyond these services, Facebook is now ambitiously moving towards building consumer hardware, such as the Portal smart display or the recently-introduced AR Glasses, in partnership with Ray-Ban. Zuckerberg believes AR Glasses will become common, just like smartphones, one day, so the brand change seems a right move towards that future.
While the new identity will give Facebook a way to build services into the metaverse, it is certainly meant to achieve a bigger purpose. Zuckerberg wants to separate its futuristic work, such as the AR Glasses, from the pressure from regulators and the scrutiny it recently came under after the whistleblower, Frances Haugen, leaked internal documents to The Wall Street Journal. Facebook is now facing pressure and that is what Zuckerberg thinks may become a hurdle in its way to the future he is so persistently committed to building. That will be the metaverse of services.
Facebook refused to comment on the story, but The Verge said the name change is coming via an announcement in a week. What this new name will be is anyone's guess right now, while the timelines of the rebranding are also not clear at this point in time.