Facebook Chairman and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, on Thursday announced a change in the parent company’s name to “Meta” to represent a future beyond just its troubled social network.
The social media giant who said it is part of a major rebranding, noted that the change does not apply to its individual platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, only the parent company that owns them.
The move follows a series of negative stories about Facebook, based on documents leaked by Frances Haugen, an ex-employee, who had accused the company of putting “profits over safety.”
The rebranding happened amid criticisms from American lawmakers and regulators over its market power, its algorithmic decisions and the policing of abuses on its platforms.
The name change, which was announced by Zuckerberg during the company’s virtual reality and augmented reality conference Facebook Connect, aligns with its growing focus on the metaverse, which refers to efforts to combine virtual and augmented reality technologies in a new online realm.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about our identity as we begin this next chapter. Facebook is one of the most used products in the history of the world,” Zuckerberg said on Thursday. “It is an iconic social media brand, but increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything that we do.
“Today we’re seen as a social media company,” he added, “but in our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people. And the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started.”
