Facebook plans to rebrand its company name next week. To reflect his focus on building the metaverse , according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The Next Name Change , which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on Oct. 28. But it could be revealed sooner, it’s meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that come with it. The rebranding would likely position Facebook’s blue app as one of many products from a parent company that oversees apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and more. There is no official statement from a Facebook spokesperson yet. Facebook plans to rebrand to build the metaverse Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware.
Like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that, over the next few years, “we will indeed go from people seeing us primarily as a social media company to being a metaverse company.” A rebranding could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on. From the intense scrutiny —especially from US authorities— the company is currently under. A former Nigerian Email Database turned “deep throater,” Frances Haugen, recently leaked a trove of damning internal documents to The Wall Street Journal. And she testified about them before Congress, antitrust regulators in the US and elsewhere are trying to break up the company, and public trust in the way Facebook does business is plummeting.
History Of The Brand
And name change Facebook isn’t the first well-known tech company to change its company name as its ambitions expand. In 2015, Google was completely under a holding company Alphabet. Partly to indicate that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate with companies making self-driving cars and health technology. For its part, Snapchat changed its name to Snap Inc. in 2016. The same year it began calling itself a ” camera company ” and debuted its first pair of Spectacles camera glasses. Facebook’s new company name is closely secret within its walls and not widely known. Even among their top managers.
One possible name could have something to do with Horizon, the name of Facebook’s still-unreleased virtual reality version. And that the company has been developing for the last few years. The name of that app was recently to Horizon Worlds . Shortly after Facebook demoed a version for workplace collaboration called Horizon Workrooms. The metaverse… a little known term. Zuckerberg’s remarks aside, Facebook has been steadily laying the groundwork for a greater focus on the next generation of technology . Last summer he created a dedicated metaverse team. Most recently, it that the head of AR and VR, Andrew Bosworth, to chief technology officer.
And Just A Couple Of Days Ago
Facebook announced plans to hire an additional 10,000 employees to work in the metaverse in Europe. The metaverse ” is going to be a big focus, and I think this is going to be a big part of the next chapter in how the Internet evolves after the mobile Internet. Zuckerberg told The Verge’s Casey Newton this summer. ” And I think it’s also going to the next big chapter for our company, really doubling down on this area .” To complicate matters, while Facebook has been heavily promoting the idea of the metaverse in recent weeks, it’s still not a widely understood concept. The term was originally by science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson to describe: a virtual world where people escape from a dystopian real world.
