CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed the new name of Facebook at the company’s connect event on Thursday, October 29, 2021.
Facebook will now be called Meta. Zuckerberg said, “We are a company that builds technology to connect. Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”
The CEO added, “To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” saying that the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass all the different businesses of the company today and is only closely associated to one product. Zuckerberg said that he hoped that the new name will help the company to be seen as a metaverse company over time.
The company mentioned that the name of its apps – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp – will remain the same.
The rebranding is a component of Facebook’s intent to move away from the social media company tag and build the story around CEO Zuckerberg’s plan of creating a ‘metaverse’.
In a blog post, Zuckerberg said the move will not impact the corporate structure of the company but will have an effect of how Facebook reports its financials. He wrote, “Starting with our results for the fourth quarter of 2021, we plan to report on two operating segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs. We also intend to start trading under the new stock ticker we have reserved, MVRS, on December 1. Today’s announcement does not affect how we use or share data.”
In a similar kind of move, Google rebranded itself and the brand was reorganised as one of the many company’s under the umbrella of parent company Alphabet.