SOCIAL MEDIA

Is ubiquitous Facebook planning a name change and a rebrand?

By our News Team | 2021

International media reports say the world’s dominant social media brand wants to be known for a wider tech contribution to society.

Facebook is planning to change its company name within the next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to international media reports.

There is speculation that the coming name change could be announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s annual Connect conference on 28 October, although it may be sooner given that the seemingly credible story has been leaked and is now being widely publicised.

The story was broken on Wednesday (20 October) by The Verge, a US-based technology news website and blog. According to The Verge, the change is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entails.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

“A rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp Oculus, and more,” the website reported.

Planned transition to a metaverse company

In a July media interview, Zuckerberg said that, over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company”.

The Verge notes: “A rebrand could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently under for the way its social platform operates today.”

Like most of us, you may be wondering what the metaverse is? The AMC’s daily marketing news service reported in September that the metaverse is a network of always-on virtual environments in which many people can interact with one another and digital objects while operating virtual representations – or avatars – of themselves. It is especially common in gaming – and now virtual concerts.

“The defining quality of the metaverse will be presence – the feeling of really being there with people… so you can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room in your home to the next,” we reported Facebook Reality Labs’ Andrew Bosworth as saying.

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