Facebook has pulled the trigger on their rumoured rebrand, collecting its various social media platforms under the umbrella name of Meta.
In a virtual conference held by the CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the change was announced on Thursday October 28th. It was also added that this change isn’t going to affect the individual social media platforms, which will still be referred to as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
The Metaverse
The company’s name is Zuckerberg’s latest move to make the “metaverse”, which is the project of Facebook designed to create an online world for people to interact with VR headsets. The idea is for remote working, gaming and communication to come together on the one fully immersive platform.
Saying that the existing brand could not “possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future”, he told a virtual audience that it was “time for [the company] to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do to reflect who we are and what we hope to build.”
He added, “I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta.”
Why now?
However, some are cynical of the change, pointing to the recent whistleblower, Frances Haugen’s, accusations as the reason for this sudden change in branding.
Haugen revealed confidential documents to the Wall Street Journal, spoke in front of the US congress and the UK Parliament and detailed her accusations in a CBS 60 Minutes interview. In these appearances she accused Facebook of doing nothing about the hate speech groups on their site because it would affect their products, and fostering an unhealthy relationship in children with Instagram, resulting in a surge of eating disorders.
