According to a source with intimate knowledge of the situation, Facebook plans to alter its corporate name next week to reflect its focus on establishing the metaverse.
The upcoming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes to discuss at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th but could be announced sooner, is designed to signify the internet giant’s aim to be known for more than just social media and all of its associated problems. The makeover would most likely present the blue Facebook app as one of many products managed by a parent business that also oversees Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and other companies. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.
Facebook currently has over 10,000 staff working on consumer devices such as augmented reality glasses, which Zuckerberg expects will become as common as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that “we will effectively move from people seeing us as largely a social media company to being a metaverse company” over the next several years.
A renaming might also help to further distinguish Zuckerberg’s futuristic work from the tremendous criticism Facebook is presently facing over its current social platform. Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistleblower, recently revealed a cache of embarrassing internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified before Congress about them. Antitrust regulators in the United States and internationally are attempting to break up Facebook, and public trust in the company’s operations is eroding.
The new Facebook corporate name, I’m told, is a highly guarded secret within the firm’s gates and isn’t widely known, even within the company’s whole top leadership. Horizon, the name of the still-unreleased VR version of Facebook-meets-Roblox that the business has been creating for the past few years, maybe a contender. Shortly after Facebook demoed a version for workplace collaboration dubbed Horizon Workrooms, the app’s name was changed to Horizon Worlds.
