When the going gets tough, it’s time for a rebrand.
Facebook has drawn a significant amount of attention recently, particularly for the leak in how damaging Instagram can be on young people, and the accusation that the company had full knowledge of it.
Now, the company is considering changing its name altogether in a rebranding effort, to better reflect CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s goals in building the "metaverse" according to reporting by The Verge.
"The metaverse is a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you," according to a Facebook blog post. This includes elements of augmented and virtual reality technology, the company wrote.
The announcement is expected to come out during the company’s annual Connect conference Oct. 28, but it could be revealed before then. The change is likely an attempt for the company to distance itself from the controversy of social media and designate Facebook itself as just another app under an umbrella company overseeing multiple platforms.
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In the coming years, "we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company," Zuckerberg said in a July interview with The Verge.
As Zuckerberg plans to devote more time to new products and innovation, Facebook itself has been under scrutiny for its knowledge of the harm its platform has on teenagers, especially girls. Public opinion of Facebook took a dive after Frances Haugen, a former employee, helped publish incriminating documents from the company and recently testified before Congress.
The new name is being kept hidden under lock-and-key, and is not even widely known among all top officials, The Verge reported.
It’s speculated the new name could be related to Horizon, a still-unreleased virtual reality iteration of "Facebook-meets-Roblox" that the company has been working on.
The metaverse is "going to be a big focus, and I think that this is just going to be a big part of the next chapter for the way that the internet evolves after the mobile internet," Zuckerberg told The Verge over the summer.
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