Facebook is planning to change the name of the company name next week.
The social media giant is planning to change its name to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a media report.
As per the report, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about the name change at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28.
It has been reported that Zuckerberg could unveil the new name sooner to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail.
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It is expected that the rebranding would position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and others.
However, a Facebook spokesperson declined to comment regarding the plan.
Facebook has over 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones.
In July, Zuckerberg told The Verge that over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
The renaming could serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently under for the way its social platform currently operates.
A former employee-turned-whistleblower, Frances Haugen, reportedly leaked a trove of damning internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress.
The metaverse is “going to be a big focus, and I think that this is just going to be a big part of the next chapter for the way that the internet evolves after the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg told The Verge’s Casey Newton this summer.
“And I think it’s going to be the next big chapter for our company too, really doubling down in this area,” The Facebook CEO said.