Facebook’s Name Change Goes Meta

From Wall Street to Main Street to Capitol Hill, everyone is huffy astatine Facebook. The institution has been nether occurrence since a trove of leaked interior documents shed airy connected its struggles to forestall real-world harm, from governmental unrest to teen suicides. Everyone has thing to accidental astir Facebook, and astir nary of it is good. So now, Mark Zuckerberg would similar you to speech astir thing else.

“Today, we're seen arsenic a societal media company, but successful our DNA we are a institution that builds exertion to link people,” Zuckerberg said astatine its Connect league connected Thursday morning, wherever helium unveiled a bid of caller products and ambitions astir the metaverse. “It is clip for america to follow a caller institution marque to encompass everything that we do, to bespeak who we are, and what we anticipation to build.” Then helium announced a caller sanction for the company: not Facebook, but Meta.

Facebook is 1 of the astir iconic brands successful the world, and it utilized to suit Zuckerberg conscionable fine. In 2019, helium slapped the Facebook sanction connected his company’s different products—Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus—to punctual radical that Facebook is not conscionable Facebook, but “a household of apps.” But now, Zuckerberg said connected Thursday, “our marque is truthful tightly linked to 1 merchandise that it can't perchance correspond everything we're doing today, fto unsocial successful the future.” The caller sanction is meant to awesome that future: 1 beyond societal media, and beyond each the atrocious news.

Companies thin to rename themselves for a prime fewer reasons. Sometimes a caller sanction reflects caller concern ambitions, arsenic erstwhile Apple released the iPhone and stopped calling itself Apple Computers. Other times, they awesome a firm restructuring, arsenic erstwhile Google renamed itself Alphabet; Larry Page became the CEO of Alphabet, not Google, clarifying his enactment beyond conscionable search. Other times, a institution seeks to region itself from a sullied brand, arsenic erstwhile cigarette-maker Philip Morris renamed itself Altria successful 2001.

Facebook’s rechristening arsenic Meta has immoderate elements of each three. The institution wants to specify itself arsenic a “metaverse” company, not conscionable a shaper of societal media products. And Zuckerberg wants much of a manus successful those caller pursuits, alternatively than overseeing the Facebook app. It besides needs to springiness itself a mode retired of the past fewer years of dunking connected Facebook, a sanction that’s go synonymous with mistrust and skepticism (not to notation conspiracy theories and genocide).

But if the institution wants to determination beyond years of Facebook backlash, it volition request to bash much than springiness itself a caller name. “A marque is simply a sum full of decisions and behaviors expressed successful words, actions, naming, graphical elements, integer interactions, and galore different elements—not conscionable talk,” says Anaezi Modu, the laminitis and CEO of Rebrand, which advises companies connected marque transformations. If Meta inactive looks similar Facebook, sounds similar Facebook, and runs its concern similar Facebook, past radical are inactive going to spot it arsenic Facebook.