The biggest “social network” worldwide with over 2.89 billion monthly active users, Facebook is on the brink of changing its brand name. It is renaming in a week, most probably until October 28.
The company is planning to rebrand itself with a new name that is not just limited to indicate merely social media. In the past 15 years, Facebook has already acquired 78 companies. At present, its top billion-dollar holdings include Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus, a VR company.
Why the name change? Is it because of the current backlash?
Facebook has been under various scrutiny from the senate in the US time and again for its conduct and operations. Well, if you have watched the movie “The Social Network“, you must be familiar with different lawsuits Facebook went through in the process. Being a social media, it has faced various cases under privacy issues and moral hazards.
Recently in this month too, a former employee Frances Haugen revealed as many internal documents that she quoted as ” Facebook is creating astronomical profits over people“. Those documents were a testimony that Facebook’s ad policies are controlling the user’s cognitive decision-making. The apps like Instagram and Facebook itself were accused of having a demonstration effect on teenagers, affecting their body insecurities. She alleged Facebook of growing insecurities in people indirectly through Instagram and Facebook ads. There are numerous articles on this matter as this made the headlines worldwide which pointed towards this Tech giant.
Following these revelations, Facebook along with its family apps- Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger went down globally for several hours on October 4. In this outage of about 6 hours, Facebook lost roughly $160 million. The Founder Mark Zuckerberg alone lost $7 billion of his net worth due to this.
As a matter of fact, we can just suppose if this could be the reason for Facebook’s rebranding. Many comments are surging over the internet indicating that Facebook is doing this to recollect the public trust so far. However, Facebook seems to be planning for this long before. Since it has other tributaries like Oculus and Horizon that include VR products, Facebook is more of a parent company for all of these.
Facebook doesn’t want to be known just for a social media company
The global company had a valuation of nearly $ 1 trillion USD in June 2021. It became the youngest company to hit this mark last June. Its major social media platforms earn from the ads and marketing campaigns that lure the users to create ads for their business pages in general. Apart from that, Facebook has other products that are far from just social media. Its subsidiary- Oculus is a VR technology company that allows users to log in through their Facebook account and connect with friends via Virtual Reality (VR) devices.
It has its next product – Horizon, which one can download from Oculus. It also falls under the domain of VR. The horizon workroom is mostly for creating a co-working space.
As a metaphor we can see, Facebook is creating a “Metaverse“. The name as they reveal would combine all of its social media apps, VR and AR products, and services. In simple words, it’s expanding its horizon.
Also read: Social Media: History, Significance and Impacts | How can we make the most out of Social Media?
Many big brands have changed their names with time
Facebook is not the first company in this trial. Many big global companies have changed their names along with time and requirements. Among the tech companies, a big Swiss PC and Tablets manufacture “Logitech” shortened its name to “Logi” in 2015. One of the biggest freelancing platforms- Upwork had a different name before. The two companies Elance and oDesk merged in 2013 to make a big company- Upwork.
In 2015, Google changed its name to Alphabet for rebranding its name for introducing self-driving cars. These rebrandings have mostly brought fortunes for many companies (if backed up by new product strategies). The cut-throat competition among the tech companies is creating a paradigm shift in this fourth industrial revolution. As these global firms are capable of updating sooner than the world itself, one can expect that Facebook is also planning something big. Whatever the name would be, through this renaming, it can be obvious that Facebook would reach new heights.
