Facebook is preparing to rebrand the company’s name next week; the move is aimed at reflecting its focus on building the metaverse..CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to address the rebrand at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th.
The Tech giants ambition is to be known for more than just a social media app.With the rebrand,Facebook wants to position itself as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more .
In an interview with The Verge, “ Zuckerberg said, the metaverse is going to 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. And I think it’s going to be the next big chapter for our company too, really doubling down in this area.
Mr Zuckeberg told the Verge that over the next several years, the company would transition from being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
The concept of Metaverse was originally coined by sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson to describe a virtual world where people escape to from a dystopian, real world.
According to Zuckerberg , the key to Facebook’s future lies with the metaverse concept – the idea that users will live, work and exercise inside a virtual universe. The company’s Oculus virtual reality headsets and service are an instrumental part of realizing that vision.
The rebrand could have been prompted by lots of challenges facing the company, such as increasing scrutiny by the United States government over its business practices.
The new name still remains a secret, even among its full senior leadership. Although, according to the Verge, a possible name could have something to do with Horizon, the name of the still-unreleased VR version of Facebook-meets-Roblox that the company has been developing for the past few years. .
The company has been investing heavily in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and it plans to connect its many users through several devices and apps. Most recently, the company announced plans to employ 10,000 people to work in the European Union over the next five years to help build the metaverse.
In 2015, Google went through a similar restructuring and created a new company, called Alphabet which became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries.The establishment of Alphabet Inc. was prompted by a desire to make the core Google business “cleaner and more accountable” while allowing greater autonomy to group companies that operate in businesses other than Internet services.
