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 making consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will become as necessary as the smartphone.
The new brand could also serve to further separate the futuristic project Zuckerberg is focused on from the tight control Facebook currently wields over how its social platforms. The former employee Frances Hagen, recently leaked a series of internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress. The antitrust regulatory authorities in USA they're trying to break up the company, and the public's trust in how Facebook works isn't the same.
Facebook wouldn't be the first big-name tech company to change its name as its ambitions expand. In 2015, Google was completely reorganized under a holding company called Alphabet, in part to signal that it was no longer just a machine search, but a huge conglomerate of companies that make self-driving cars and healthcare technology.
