Facebook plans to change the company's name next week to reflect its focus on metaverse development, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The upcoming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to present at Connect's annual conference on October 28, and could be unveiled earlier, is intended to signal the ambition of the largest social network in the metaverse sector.
The rebrand would probably place Facebook as one of the many products of a parent company that oversees groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and more.
Facebook already has more than 10.000 employees who make consumer hardware such as AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will necessarily become like smartphones.
The new name could also be used to further separate the futuristic work that Zuckerberg is focusing on from Facebook's tight control over the way its social platform works. The former employee Frances Hagen, recently leaked a series of internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and filed them before Congress. Antitrust regulators in the US are trying to break up the company and public confidence in how Facebook works is not the same.
Facebook will not be the first known technology company to change its name as its ambitions expand. In 2015, Google was completely reorganized under a portfolio company called Alphabet, in part to signal that it was no longer just a search engine, but a huge group of companies making self-driving cars and technology for the healthcare sector.
