Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at his company’s Connect event that its new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”
“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added. He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does now, and is still closely linked to one product. “But over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company.”
The company said it would better “encompass” what it does, as it broadens its reach beyond social media into areas like virtual reality (VR).
The change does not apply to its individual platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, only the parent company that owns them.
The move follows a series of negative stories about Facebook, based on documents leaked by an ex-employee.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name as he unveiled plans to build a “metaverse” – an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.
He said the existing brand could not “possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future”, and needed to change.
“Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards,” he told a virtual conference.
“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.”
The company also unveiled a new sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Thursday, replacing its thumbs-up “Like” logo with a blue infinity shape.
Facebook’s announcement that it is changing its name to Meta has caused quite the stir in Israel where the word sounds like the Hebrew word for “dead”.
To be precise, Meta is pronounced like the feminine form of the Hebrew word.
A number of people have taken to Twitter to share their take on the name under the hashtag #FacebookDead.
The emergency rescue volunteers Zaka even got involved, telling their followers on Twitter: “Don’t worry, we’re on it”.
Facebook has also recently been plagued by accusations of prioritizing profits over user safety and has come under congressional fire in recent years for not doing enough to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform. Before that, there was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which raised concerns about harvesting user data. Despite this, Facebook has reportedly decided to stop apologizing for its wrongdoings moving forward.
“Faced with a tsunami of evidence of irresponsible behavior and possible criminal violations, Facebook is desperate to change the subject,” Roger McNamee, an early investor in the Facebook and outspoken critic, told Recode last week in regards to the name change.
Laurel Sutton, co-founder of the branding agency Catchword, told Time that the decision is unlikely to change people’s perception, given the app’s checkered past. “There’s no name that’s going to rehabilitate the behavior that they’ve displayed so far,” she said.
It remains to be seen how the rebranding will change the perception of Facebook after the battering it took in recent years