Fb plans to alter firm title to deal with the metaverse

Facebook plans to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The upcoming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to speak about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28, but which could be announced earlier, is intended to signal the tech giant’s ambition for more than just social media and all of it related To be known badly. The rebranding would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment on the story.

Facebook intends to develop into a “metaverse company”

Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will at some point be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that “in the next few years we will be effectively moving from people who see us primarily as social media companies to being metaverse”.

A rebranding could also serve to further separate the futuristic work that Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently studying on the way its social platform works today. A former whistleblower worker Frances Haugen recently leaked a host of damning internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and testified before Congress. Antitrust authorities in the US and elsewhere are trying to dismantle the company and public confidence in Facebook’s business is falling.

Facebook isn’t the first known tech company to change its company name as its ambitions grow. In 2015, Google completely reorganized itself under a holding company called Alphabet, among other things to signal that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate of companies that manufacture self-driving cars and healthcare technology. And Snapchat was renamed Snap Inc. in 2016, the same year it called itself a “camera company” and launched its first Spectacles camera glasses.

I’ve been told that the new Facebook company name is a well-kept secret within its walls and is not widely known, even among senior management. One possible name could have something to do with Horizon, the name of the still unpublished VR version of Facebook-meets-Roblox that the company has been developing for a number of years. The name of this app was recently changed to Horizon Worlds shortly after Facebook demonstrated a version for workplace collaboration called Horizon Workrooms.

Facebook has laid the foundation for a brand change

Aside from Zuckerberg’s comments, Facebook has consistently laid the foundations for a stronger focus on the next generation of technology. It set up a dedicated Metaverse team last summer. It was recently announced that Head of AR and VR, Andrew Bosworth, has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer. And just a few days ago, Facebook announced that it would hire 10,000 more employees to work on the Metaversum in Europe.

The Metaverse will be “a huge focus, and I think that will be just a big part of the next chapter on how the internet evolves after mobile internet,” Zuckerberg told The Verge’s Casey Newton this summer. “And I think it will also be the next big chapter for our company that really doubles in this area.”

To make matters worse, Facebook has promoted the idea of ​​the metaverse heavily in recent weeks, but it is still not a generally understood concept. The term was originally coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson to describe a virtual world into which people escape from a dystopian, real world. Now it’s being taken over by one of the largest and most controversial companies in the world – and it has to explain why it’s worth diving into your own virtual world.

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