Google has already done this, which has been called Alphabet for some time. And now it could also touch Facebook. According to reports from the TheVerge website, in fact, the Menlo Park giant is thinking of changing its name starting next week. Attention, let’s clear up a misunderstanding immediately: it would not be the Facebook social network to change its name, but the company Facebook Inc., which owns many other services and platforms starting from WhatsApp and Instagram.
Change of strategy
The next name change, which Mark Zuckerberg could unveil during “Connect”, the annual conference scheduled for October 28th, seems to have a very specific and ambitious purpose. It’s time for Facebook to be known for more than social media (and all the evils that that entails). There is no doubt that with the rebrand, the blue Facebook app would become one of the company’s products like WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus and others. And Zuckerberg would thus try to free the entire company from the social network which in the last period is a very random mix of joys and sorrows.
And perhaps all this would also serve to proceed quickly towards the now declared objective: the metaverse. Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. A few months ago, the CEO said that in the next few years, “we will actually go from people who see us primarily as a social media company to a metaverse company.”
The example of Google
As said earlier, Facebook wouldn’t be the first major tech company to change the company’s name. In 2015, Google reorganized itself entirely under a holding company called Alphabet, in part to signal that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate of companies producing driverless cars, smartphones, healthcare technology, and more. Snapchat was also renamed to Snap Inc. in 2016. Next should be Facebook. On the hypotheses of the new name, however, there is no clue. At least for now.