According to The Verge, Facebook will rebrand and change its company name within the next week. According to The Verge, Facebook will change its name to reflect its metaverse focus. It could also be connected to Horizon Worlds, a social virtual reality world that is still unreleased. While the Facebook branding will likely be retained, Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp, and WhatsApp will all be part of a new parent company. This would be similar in nature to Google's 2015 move of its various divisions and projects under the parent company Alphabet.
According to The Verge, the name change is being kept secret and not all senior executives are aware of it. Mark Zuckerberg has talked for years about his desire to make Facebook a metaverse business and has been making progress towards this goal. Facebook created a team to create a metaverse. It also talked about adding 10,000 jobs to the European Union in the next five-years to help build its virtual and immersive reality experiences. In September, it also launched the Ray-Ban Stories AR smart glasses.
We reached out to Facebook for clarification. Joe Osborne, spokesperson for the company, said that they don't comment on speculation or rumors.
Although it is not clear how long Facebook has been planning to change its name, it is a distraction from the ongoing investigations and negative press. Former executive-turned-whisleblower Frances Haugen provided the Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission with a treasure trove of internal documents, dropped several revelations about the company and accused it of choosing "profit over safety" something Zuckerberg adamantly denied.
She testified in a Senate hearing on October 1st about the research that shows Facebook repeatedly lies about its platform. This includes the "efficacy" of its artificial intelligence systems and its role as spreading divisive, extreme messages. Haugen has many ideas about what Facebook should do differently, but none of them have anything to do the changing of its name. These include restoring chronological feeds to algorithmic ranking, adding features to prevent misinformation spreading and opening Facebook research to outsiders.
