Facebook wants to change its company name as soon as next week, according to a new report from The Verge. The new name will reportedly reflect Facebook’s focus on building the metaverse, a concept that has quickly become a buzzword in the tech world in recent times.
Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about the name change at the upcoming annual Connect conference on October 28, but it could be revealed sooner, the report says. The rebrand will likely position Facebook as a separate product under a new parent company that also oversees other products like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. The move would be similar to what Google did back in 2015 when it set up a new parent company called Alphabet.
“We will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company,” Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge back in July. He also previously said that the metaverse is “going to be a big focus, and I think that this is just going to be a big part of the next chapter for the way that the internet evolves after the mobile internet.”
The report says that the new name is a closely guarded secret and is not known among even Facebook’s senior leadership.
Facebook has ramped up its efforts on building metaverse in recent months. Last summer, it set up a dedicated metaverse team. A few days ago, Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 new people in Europe to work on metaverse. The company also recently invested $50m in funding programs and external research to help “build the metaverse responsibly.”
Facebook describes metaverse as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”
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