Facebook has revealed a new company name and brand – but the reaction has largely been to ridicule the move.
Mark Zuckerberg said his company is rebranding itself as Meta in an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future – what the CEO and founder calls the “metaverse”.
But the decision also comes amid a string of controversies that have followed the company’s various ventures, particularly the main Facebook platform, Instagram and WhatsApp.
While the wider company name is being rebranded to Meta, the core Facebook service will remain unchanged.
This is similar to how Google created a new parent company name, Alphabet, in 2015 to represent its shift beyond simply being a search engine.
Zuckerberg said the current 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”.