In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook. It was just a directory of Harvard students: The Face Book. Facebook is now a household name after two decades of acquisitions and millions of dollars. It now wants a new one.
According to The Verge, Zuckerberg will announce a new name next week at Facebook Connect. This is the company's annual conference. The new name will encompass Facebook, Instagram WhatsApp, Oculus and all the other members of the family. It will also clarify the company's status as a conglomerate with ambitions that go beyond social media. While the Facebook app is the foundation of the company's success, Zuckerberg made it clear that the future of his company lies in the metaverse.
What's in a name? Facebook's name comes with strong associations and some reputational damage. It is also subject to scrutiny by Congress and public disapproval. Facebook's name has caused trust problems in recent ventures such as its expansion into cryptocurrency. Facebook may be able to overcome this problem by renaming its parent company. Facebook is not the only corporate giant to try to gain goodwill by changing its name: Cable companies do this all the time.
Yet, branding professionals and amateurs on Twitter are convinced that renaming the company can help to improve its reputation or distance itself from scandals.
Jim Heininger, the founder of Rebranding Experts (a company that focuses exclusively on rebranding companies), says everyone knows what Facebook is. Facebook should take corrective actions to fix the problems that have recently tarnished its brand. This is not a change in its name or installation of a new brand architecture.
Facebook's decision to rename itself follows the leakage of thousands of pages by Frances Haugen to The Wall Street Journal. This exposed a company that has little regard for the public good. These documents prompted a hearing at Capitol Hill. Congress has been discussing for years the possibility of Facebook being regulated or dismantled.
The company might get a new name. Anaezi Modu is the CEO and founder of Rebrand. Rebrand advises companies in brand transformations. A company's mission, culture and capabilities are what make a brand, rather than its name, logo or marketing. It is useless to change a company's name unless Facebook has plans to address some of its many problems. It can actually make matters worse if a company's name is changed in a way that makes it seem distant from its reputation.
Modu believes that renaming a company makes sense in order to clarify its organization. This is similar to what other conglomerates have done. Google restructured its parent company Alphabet in 2015. This was to reflect the company's growth beyond Google Search Engine (Google), to include a variety of ventures, including DeepMind, Waymo and Fitbit. While most people still refer to the company as Google (or Google X), the name Alphabet signals how the company is connected.
