Facebook On Thursday October 28 announced that it has changed its corporate name to Meta as part of a major rebrand.
The name change however does not apply to individual social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The move to change Facebook’s name comes after a series of negative stories that were leaked by a former employee Francis Haugen who accused the company of putting profits first instead of safety.
The name change was announced through the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference.
The new name reflects the company’s ambitions to go beyond social media and broaden into areas like virtual reality.
“Today we are seen as a social media company, but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg announced the new name as he unveiled plans to build a metaverse.
“The existing brand could not possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future and needed to change,” he noted.
“Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards. We’re now looking at and reporting on our business as two different segments, one for our family of apps, and one for our work on future platforms. And as part of this, it is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do, to reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he told the virtual conference.
The company also unveiled a new sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Thursday, replacing its thumbs-up “Like” logo with a blue infinity shape.
Mr Zuckerberg said the new name reflects that over time, users will not need to use Facebook to use the company’s other services.
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