Facebook to reportedly change its name, create a parent company like Google

• Facebook to rebrand itself as soon as next week, The Verge reported

• The social media could create a parent company that would overlook Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus

• Facebook has been working for months to create a metaverse named Horizon

Facebook Inc is planning to rebrand itself by changing the company name as soon as next week, reflecting the social media giant’s focus on building a metaverse, The Verge reported on Wednesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The report said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to announce the name change at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th but could unveil sooner.

The social media giant will likely create a parent company that would oversee Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus, similar to what Google did in 2015 when it put its various divisions, along with itself, under its parent company Alphabet.

The Verge report said the name change is a closely guarded secret at the moment, and not even all senior leaders have knowledge about it.

Facebook’s metaverse plan

The rebranding is expected to connect with its unreleased social virtual reality world called Horizon, which Facebook has been developing for the past few years. Horizon even features a workplace collaboration which the social media giant demoed earlier.

Zuckerberg, in July, said that over the next several years, Facebook will “transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

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. “And I think it’s going to be the next big chapter for our company too, really doubling down in this area.”

Earlier this year, Facebook formed a team dedicated to building the metaverse and announced to hire 10,000 “high-skilled” employees across the European Union over the next five years for its virtual and augmented reality world.

Read More: Facebook to pay $14.25 million to settle U.S. employment discrimination claims

Facebook under scrutiny

Although it is still not officially known when and how Facebook will announce its rebranding, the name change will undoubtedly be a good distraction for the investigations it’s facing. Former executive-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen has leaked thousands of pages of internal documents and provided them to the U.S. Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accusing Facebook of choosing “profit over safety.”

In early October, at a Senate hearing, Haugen testified that the social network repeatedly lied about its platform, including the “efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems, and its role in spreading divisive and extreme messages.”

Picture Credit: USA Today