Will Facebook soon no longer be called Facebook?

According to media reports, the Facebook Group is about to change its name. The move is more than mere cosmetics: it illustrates the group’s detachment from its main product, the eponymous social network, and its development into a comprehensive digital company.

Google is leading the way

Unprecedented would be the step of the renaming thereby by no means. The most prominent predecessor company is Google: the group behind the search engine was once renamed Alphabet to make it clear that various other services are also operated in addition to the search engine. Again, the renaming was directly related to the massive expansion of the business and a changing focus.

Facebook is in a similar situation: The group has long since ceased to focus solely on the social network, but also operates various other popular projects. WhatsApp and Instagram are at the forefront here. But that’s not all: With the development of a so-called “metaverse”, Facebook wants to shift the focus of the group once again significantly.

New major project as flagship

The “metaverse” is to become a kind of digital world in which people can stay, meet and go about their daily lives – in a consumer-oriented way, of course. For Facebook, the new project not only opens up the possibility of decisively changing the world in the direction of a comprehensive digitization of the entire living space, but also that of monetarily involving its own group in almost every consumer action – after all, with the “Metaversum,” Facebook is the provider of the digital world to which a considerable part of life is to shift.

The fact that Facebook is serious about the project is shown, for example, by the announcement that it intends to create 10,000 new jobs in Europe to drive the development forward. It should be noted that the company has already taken important steps toward the “metaverse” through its massive expansion in recent years.

The renaming ultimately represents a symbolic as well as high-profile emphasis on this development, which is already recognizably underway, and should once again reinforce the Group’s restructuring and its ambitions.

Negative press overshadows Facebook’s plans

But the joy within the group is unlikely to be completely undimmed on October 28, the date of the annual Connect conference, during which the renaming is expected to be announced: Reports by whistleblower Frances Haugen and other former employees of the group not only reveal the dark sides of the business model, but also Facebook’s will to ignore and deny them in public for financial and power-political reasons, despite overwhelming evidence. It recently became known that the company has known for a long time that Instagram use has a significant negative impact on the mental health of children and young people, which was denied in public despite knowing better.