In the last few hours, popular social media platform, Facebook, has been trending following the latest announcement of a change of name of the parent company to Meta.
The new name was made public on Wednesday by Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, during the company’s annual Connect conference
While many have misunderstood the details to mean that Facebook would cease to exist and would become Meta, Zuckerberg, in his statement, stressed that the social media platform will still retain the Facebook name; however, the parent company will now be known as Meta.
The reason for the new brand name, according to Zuckerberg, is because the company’s ambitions have moved from just being a social media platform that connects people around the world to an organisation that now includes Instagram, WhatsApp, its Quest VR headset, its Horizon VR platform among others, thus name Facebook doesn’t cover it all.
Zuckerberg, while giving the reason behind the name Meta explained that what the brand intends to do in future as it intends to make virtual life a reality where people can work, shop, learn and play.
The new change of name from Facebook to Meta is similar to what happened to Google in 2015 when the internal structure of the tech company was reorganised and brought about the name Alphabet as the parent company.
A look at Facebook’s Wikipedia page showed that Meta Inc has been replaced with the former name Facebook Inc.
It was also discovered that a Meta.com website has also been created.
An extract from the website read “The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. Our company’s vision is to help bring the metaverse to life, so we are changing our name to reflect our commitment to this future.
It added that “3D spaces in the metaverse will let you socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine.“
However, there are critical claims behind the latest move by Facebook as critics claim it to be an attempt to change the subject from the Facebook Papers.
Facebook Papers is a leaked document that revealed the ways Facebook ignored internal reports and warnings of the harms its social network generated or heightened across the world.
Following the revelations in Facebook Papers, the social media giants face legislative and regulatory scrutiny in many parts of the world, and perhaps the recent change of name is to distant the parent company from the subsidiaries when it comes to taking the blame and consequences that may arise.
