Facebook, the company responsible for the biggest social media platform in the world, as well as a few other things, has changed its name to Meta Platform Inc. “Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg while unveiling this new name.
Meta’s social media platform will continue to be called Facebook. The rebrand itself mainly focuses on building a ‘metaverse,’ or a shared virtual environment that the company thinks will be a successor to mobile internet.
The tech giant is home to a number of other platforms, apart from Facebook, like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus, which will all come under the Meta Platforms Inc. umbrella from now on. The company has made heavy investments in AR and VR, which was evident in the fact that the announcement itself was live-streamed in virtual and augmented reality.
Meta’s Facebook platform has been mired in controversy lately. Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who is a former employee testified before a US Senate subcommittee recently, having said, “The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”
Facebook has since been in damage control mode and some believe this latest move to rebrand the company could have been sped up due to these accusations. This is not the first time such allegations have hit the company either. Its handling of user data and policing of abuses such as health misinformation, violent rhetoric, and hate speech have come under fire several times in the past.
A new logo has already been unveiled for Meta, replacing the old ‘thumbs up’ logo of Facebook. The company will start trading under the new stock ticker ‘MVRS’ from December 1 onwards.