Facebook to Rebrand Itself Under a New Name Soon, Rumors Reveal

According to reports, Facebook is planning to re-brand itself under a new name just like how Google consolidated itself under Alphabet in 2015. As the company seeks to evolve into a metaverse company, the timing of the decision coincides with increasing regulatory scrutiny around how it operates. These probes are impacting the reputation of WhatsApp and Instagram as well. The coming days may throw some light on how Facebook navigates through these challenges.

Facebook’s plans to reposition itself as a metaverse company may become a reality sooner than expected. According to a source familiar with the matter who spoke with The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark ZuckerbergOpens a new window will soon announce a change of the company name at the upcoming annual conference Connect on October 28th, or maybe sooner.

Facebook’s presence in the metaverse space is through a workplace collaboration tool called Horizon Workrooms. It goes without saying that the ambition is still in its infancy, considering metaverse, which is an “embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at,” is still under development.

So it is safe to say that changing the name of the company, which would consolidate Facebook, along with Instagram, Oculus, WhatsApp, etc., under one new umbrella, is simply a rebranding exercise, at least as of now. The move to rebrand as a metaverse company has been Zuckerberg’s long-term vision for Facebook, which he started in his room at Harvard.

The $2 billion acquisitionOpens a new window of Oculus was the first step to this end. A few years down the line, Zuckerberg notedOpens a new window , “I said before that VR is going to be bigger than people realize. Certainly we’re doing more long-term research now focused on AR as well. But I think the commitment to VR is certainly still strong, and that’s the technology path that we’re going to use to get there.”

The rumored rebranding also comes on the heels of heightened scrutiny, global criticism, not to mention investigations following explosive revelations by Frances Haugen, an employee-turned-whistleblower. Through internal company documents, Haugen revealed that the company prioritized profit and growth over user safety, differential and privileged treatment of high-profile users, which called into question Facebook’s ethical practices, or lack thereof.

See More: Facebook Outage: What Went Wrong for the Internet Giant?

Consequently, the trust of users and of the general public in Facebook is at an all-time low and is rapidly eroding. U.S. lawmakers are even keen on breaking up the company, as well as other Big Tech giants, through a recently proposed set of five antitrust bills.

So with the latest developments, Facebook will hope to steer the narrative away from the media, user, and regulatory scrutiny it is being subjected to. However, whether or not Facebook will be able to ride out the storm is a dubious proposition at best.

For instance, when Google did the same by establishing a different entity known as Alphabet in 2015, it was not facing an intense backlash from global spheres. Alphabet was established as a holding company to denote how Google had evolved from a search engine service to a global conglomerate having a presence in multiple technology avenues.

While Facebook’s intentions may be the same, it is certainly going to be an arduous road for the social media giant to evolve into a metaverse company. What’s more, the company’s (dis)reputation precedes it when it comes to upholding user privacy. So much so that the United Kingdom’s competition watchdog Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) took it upon itself to block the $400 million deal to acquire GIF platform Giphy earlier this year.

Before that, Facebook faced turbulence with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and for acquiring companies such as the now defunct mobile web analytics vendor Onavo, that offer a data-driven view into the market to conduct and expand its own business.

Nevertheless, that hasn’t deterred Facebook from making strides to attain its goals. It already has approximately one-fifth or 10,000 of the total number of Facebook employees working in the division responsible for AR-VR device research. The Menlo Park, CA-based company on Sunday also announced it would recruit 10,000 high-skilled professionalsOpens a new window within the European Union (EU) over the next five years to build the metaverse.

Facebook’s commitment to its metaverse plans is also evident from the promotion of AR-VR vice presidentOpens a new window Andrew “Boz” Bosworth to the role of the chief technology officer sometime in 2022. “As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in augmented reality, virtual reality and more, and as part of this transition a few other groups will join Boz’s team as well,” noted Zuckerberg.

“This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I’m excited about the future of this work under Boz’s leadership.”

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