According to The Verge, Facebook is planning on changing its company name as early as next week. The name change is reported to come due to the company’s focus on the metaverse. The Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms are likely to remain with the same names, and only the parent company will see the new name.
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Google made a similar change when it created Alphabet to be the parent company of Google. The name change is expected to be covered by Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s Connect conference on October 28th. The metaverse is the suspected reason Facebook is making this decision.
Zuckerberg has unleashed an army of people to work on his metaverse concept and build it out. So the company is betting big on making products that will work within that universe. The metaverse is like a community within a community, and you can read our editorial on the concept here.
Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that, over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
Aside from Zuckerberg’s comments, Facebook has been steadily laying the groundwork for a greater focus on the next generation of technology. This past summer it set up a dedicated metaverse team. More recently, it announced that the head of AR and VR, Andrew Bosworth, will be promoted to chief technology officer. And just a couple of days ago Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 more employees to work on the metaverse in Europe.
The Verge
According to The Verge, the name change is a closely guarded secret, and only a few top Facebook officials know what the name is. If the reports are correct, then we’ll all know what the name will be soon enough.
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