Facebook plans to change the name of its business next week to focus on building the metaverse.
The upcoming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28, could be unveiled earlier and aims to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known. for more than social media and all the evils that come with it.
The rebranding would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products from a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc.
Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees making consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg says will ultimately be as ubiquitous as smartphones.
A rebranding could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focusing on and the scrutiny Facebook is currently undergoing for how its social platform operates today.
Former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen recently disclosed a wealth of damning internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress. Antitrust regulators in the United States and elsewhere are trying to break the business, and public confidence in the way Facebook does business is on the decline.
Facebook isn’t the first well-known tech company to change its name as its ambitions grow.
In 2015, Google completely reorganized under a holding company called Alphabet, in part to signal that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate with companies making driverless cars and technology. health.
For its part, Snapchat was renamed Snap Inc. in 2016, the same year it started calling itself a “camera company” and launched its first pair of Spectacles eyeglasses.
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