The Verge reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to announce the change during the company’s annual Connect conference. The event is scheduled to take place on 28 October, but the rebranding announcement could happen earlier. As to what the new name will be, there’s no clear indication as to what it may be yet. The report states that the new name is a closely guarded secret, even from senior leadership people. Facebook won’t be the first to be rebranding itself this way. Back in 2015, Google changed its name to Alphabet to signify that it’s the umbrella corporation that owns the Google search engine, among other products. It’s a similar story with Snapchat, which turned into Snap Inc so that it could release things that have less to do with the messaging app.
But going back to Facebook, the company looks to be doing something similar to Snap Inc, but on a much larger scale. The report states that Zuckerberg intends to “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company”. While it remains to be seen what exactly the often co-opted word means in this context, it likely has something to do with AR and VR. Whatever it is, it’s probably a good idea to put some distance between that initiative and the social media that courts new controversies seemingly every other month. (Source: The Verge)
