Facebook has changed its name to Meta, in a rebrand aimed at widening its scope from a social-media company to one focused on the metaverse. The rebrand comes amid growing scrutiny of the company after former employee Frances Haugen accused Facebook of misinformation, exacerbating teen mental health problems, inaccurate metrics and other dubious business practices.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the Facebook brand is so tightly linked to one product that it cannot represent everything the company does or what it aims to do in the future. Over time the company hopes to be seen as a “metaverse company.”
He said: “Building social apps will always be important for us, and there’s a lot more to build. But increasingly, it’s not all we do. In our DNA, we build technology to bring people together. The metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started.”
The move will not impact the company’s other brands or apps, such as Instagram or WhatsApp. However, the new company “will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first,” said Zuckerberg. This means that in the future users will not need a Facebook account to use its other services.