Facebook’s parent corporation according to reports will change its name to something more focused on “the metaverse” next week.
According to the Verge, a US tech news website, Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is planning to discuss the name change during the company’s annual product conference, Connect, on 28 October, business event next week when more details about the metaverse are set to be unveiled.
Facebook has also announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the “metaverse”, a virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.
It has been revealed that Facebook will rename its holding company but not its eponymous social networking platform, which is internally referred to as the “big blue app.” The firm also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and the virtual reality company Oculus, in addition to its founding site.
The parent firm, Facebook, also controls the same-named social media site, Instagram, and WhatsApp, implying that a name change may bring these and other businesses under the same banner, as Google did with its parent company Alphabet.
Facebook is said to be considering a rebranding amid its worst public relations crisis since the Cambridge Analytica incident three years ago.
Frances Haugen, a former employee, leaked tens of thousands of papers and provided devastating testimony to US lawmakers last month, claiming that Facebook prioritized “astronomical profits over people.”
Facebook faces significant pressure following the Haugen revelations.
In response, Zuckerberg wrote in a blogpost: “At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and wellbeing. That’s just not true.”
