Facebook goes Meta: Zuckerberg announces new corporate name
While Facebook will still be the name for the blue-colored social media app, Meta will be the umbrella company that also includes Instagram and WhatsApp.
By David Ingram
Facebook is reshuffling its names under a rebranded corporate parent: Meta.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the change Thursday, saying he wanted a new brand and a clearer corporate naming scheme to help focus on what’s next for the internet beyond social media.
The rebrand comes as Facebook faces a deluge of news stories and public scrutiny based on thousands of internal corporate documents obtained by news organizations, including NBC News. The documents, originating with former Facebook product manager and whistleblower Frances Haugen, reveal internal employee dissent over the platform’s policies.
The change won’t affect the name of the company’s signature blue-colored app, which will keep the name Facebook. But it will mean a new identity for the corporate umbrella that also owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
Together with the app Messenger, Meta will own and control four of the most popular smartphone apps in the world.
The name is a nod to the idea of the “metaverse,” a term for a potential future internet that emphasizes virtual spaces. Zuckerberg said the metaverse will be the internet’s “next frontier.”
“Facebook is one of the most-used products in the history of the world. It is an iconic social media brand, but increasingly, it just doesn’t encompass everything we do,” he said in an online presentation.
“I want to anchor our work and our identity in what we are building towards,” he said.
Facebook’s focus on the idea of a metaverse has a lot of precedent in other tech companies, from the virtual world Second Life founded in 2003 to the online gaming platform Roblox. It’s also been the subject of numerous science fiction novels and films such as “Ready Player One.”
Zuckerberg, who has a longtime interest in studying classical Greece and Rome, noted that “meta” is Greek for “beyond.”
The company’s stock ticker will also change from FB to MVRS as of Dec. 1, CNBC reported.
The creation of Meta is reminiscent of Google’s decision in 2015 to restructure under a new corporate parent named Alphabet. That change separated Google’s search engine and advertising businesses from other, unproven projects, such as the development of autonomous vehicles.