Over the last few decades, Facebook has gained popularity with some of the world’s most iconic branding: a large blue-and-white letter F.
On October 28th, the social networking corporation moved towards rebranding, de-emphasizing Facebook’s name and rebranding itself as Meta. The company also debuted a new sign at its Menlo Park, California headquarters, which replaces the thumbs-up “Like” logo with a blue infinity symbol.
Facebook indicated that as it expands its influence beyond social media into fields such as virtual reality, it will “encompass” everything it does (VR). Facebook’s other products, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, will operate under the Meta label.
Facebook isn’t the only well-known technology company to change its name as its objectives expand. In 2015, Google restructured, demonstrating that it was no longer merely a search engine but a massive empire with companies developing self-driving cars and healthcare technology.
Facebook now employs over 10,000 people to develop consumer gear such as augmented reality glasses, which Zuckerberg hopes will one day be as commonplace as smartphones. He stated in July that “over the next several years, we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards.”
At the same time, changing Facebook may help the firm remove itself from the current social networking concerns, such as how it is used to disseminate hate speech and disinformation. For instance, lawmakers and the public have chastised the firm’s Instagram photo-sharing app for allegedly harming the self-esteem of youngsters, and the company has been questioned for its role in spreading misinformation and inflaming racial tensions with incendiary content.
According to Zuckerberg, the current brand could not “possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future, and needed to change.”
“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.”
According to Mr Zuckerberg, the new name symbolizes that users will no longer utilize Facebook to access the company’s other services.
The term “meta” comes from the Greek word which means “beyond.” Although a metaverse appears to be a form of virtual reality, some feel it could be the internet’s future. In a metaverse, people can use a headset instead of a computer to connect to a virtual environment that connects many digital realities. The virtual world is expected to be used for nearly everything, including work, recreation, and entertainment, as well as socializing with friends and family.
The metaverse would 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 said. “And I think it’s going to be the next big chapter for our company too, really doubling down in this area.”
Even though Facebook has been extensively advertising the metaverse concept in recent weeks, it is still a perplexing concept. However, because the idea is speculative, it may take years for Facebook to evolve into a metaverse firm. Facebook and its related applications are still huge businesses, producing over $86 billion in annual sales and serving over 3.5 billion people worldwide.
Nonetheless, corporate rebranding is exceptional, but it has happened before. It has been chiefly employed to indicate a firm’s structural rearrangement or separate a conglomerate from a negative reputation. Let’s see how Facebook handles this rebranding.