A century after it was founded, Philip Morris decided that it was time for a new name: In 2003, the tobacco company officially became the Altria Group, but its lousy image has remained. Facebook apparently hopes for more success: Like the tech portal The Verge reported, the group wants to rename itself. Facebook did not comment on this when asked.
According to this, Mark Zuckerberg is to announce the name at a conference on October 28th, but it may also become known earlier. Allegedly, it is also a well-kept secret within Facebook, only a few people should know about it. The name could have something to do with “Horizon”, a word that Facebook recently used for its virtual reality platforms Horizon World and Horizon Workrooms.
Because exactly in this direction Facebook wants to develop: In five years Facebook will no longer be viewed primarily as a social media operator, but as a Metaverse group, said Zuckerberg in the summer. The term describes an Internet in which the virtual and real world merge. Facebook wants to combine augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) so that people can meet and interact as avatars in a digital space.
“You can imagine the metaverse as an embodied Internet in which you not only look at content, but put it into it,” said Zuckerberg himself. Facebook is betting that the Metaverse will be the next big thing. The group already employs thousands of people who build hardware such as AR and VR glasses. In Europe, 10,000 more jobs are to be created that have to do with the Metaverse.
Facebook wants to have a decisive influence on the new world
In 2014, Facebook took over the company Oculus, which produces VR glasses. Now the long-term strategy behind it reveals itself. When half of humanity meets and communicates in the Metaverse in the future, Facebook wants to have a decisive influence on the new world. In contrast to Apple and Google, Facebook does not have its own mobile operating system, Facebook’s smartphone plans have floundered. This strategic mistake worries Zuckerberg – now he has a chance to control the hardware with which people interact.
With the name change, Facebook could not only underline its Metaverse ambitions, but also want to get rid of legacy issues. The group has been sliding from one scandal to the next for years, trusting the Facebook brand at an all-time low. So far, the consequences have been limited: around 2.9 billion people use the network. If you include Instagram and Whatsapp, the group networks around 3.5 billion users.
Younger people in particular associate the name Facebook with a platform for their parents’ generation. This is unlikely to change: The blue app should keep its name, only the umbrella brand will change. Another example from the tech industry shows that for many people the product is more important than the name of the company: Six years ago Google officially became alphabet, but to this day the search engine is still considered a synonym for the company by many people.