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Some time ago, we were talking about the metaverse, which is now a key word in every speech made by Mark Zuckerberg, and now a new one has arrived in this sense. The social network has just announced a change of social name for October 28th, in order to reflect its strategy and will to reorient itself towards the famous metaverse. Passion Media comes back on this announcement that made the web tremble.
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Official announcement scheduled for October 28
The announcement will be made at Facebook’s annual conference, also called “Connect”, on October 28. The goal of this complete rebranding is to broaden the company’s spectrum and impact, but also to move away from the bad press about the negative impact on the mental health of young people. Mark Zuckerberg wants to show that Facebook is not just a social network, and that the ambitions and impact of the company are not limited to its current scope. The social network with the blue logo would then be a simple division of the company, just like WhatsApp, Oculus, or Instagram.
Facebook wants to broaden its spectrum
The firm is often pointed out for its social network and its increasingly criticized limits. But it is much more than that, already today. Facebook has 10,000 employees, who work not only on the application but also on research, on connected objects (we talked to you about AR glasses not long ago).
A way to reshape its image from scratch
This announcement is not insignificant. It comes after many various scandals. The most recent to date? Frances Haugen, a former employee, recently revealed to the Wall Street Journal a multitude of internal documents damaging Facebook. What did these documents contain? Mainly information proving that the company was aware of the negative impact of its platform on various targets, and that it was trying to minimize the effect. This whistleblower went further and testified before Congress.
Name change: a common practice?
Contrary to what one might think, Facebook is not the only company to choose to change its name in order to show the evolution of its strategy.
Google became Alphabet in 2015. The idea? In the same logic as Facebook does, to signal by this name change the fact that Google is not or no longer a simple search engine but a company with multiple activities with various impacts (car manufacturer, connected objects, health sector company, etc…).
Snapchat became Snap Inc. in 2016. This announcement came at the same time that the company launched cameras and its first connected glasses.
In a completely different field […] Total became Total Energies in 2021. A strategy to show the company’s openness to other forms of energy than oil, and to position itself as a more committed player.
Rumors about the new name are causing a stir on the web
This announcement has attracted the curiosity of journalists, influencers, tech lovers, researchers, politicians … In short, a nice way to tease the announcement and prepare the general public for a radical change of name. Some people talk about something close to the name “Horizon”. The clues? That’s the name that was given to the VR version of Facebook-meets-Roblox (still not released today) and recently renamed internally Horizon Worlds. It also echoes a program recently launched internally called “Horizon Workrooms”. In short, we can’t wait to find out more about this announcement.
A new chapter for the company
The rebranding embodies a more global approach for the company. And this one is materializing today through many actions: creation of a team dedicated to the metaverse, promotion of Andrew Bosworth to the position of CTO, announcement of a recruitment phase of more than 10,000 people on the subject of metavers in Europe. The future will tell us if this new chapter will enhance the positive side of the leader of social networks. Facebook has indeed shown in the past that its social network could be of public use and serve many causes: alerting, information on the health of the population, and fighting against misinformation…
