Renaming a brand is a usual occurrence in the world of business especially when such a business is recently acquired by new owners and the business happens to reshuffle and/or change the entire managerial team.
Some reasons a newly acquired business deemed it fit to change the business name after acquisition may include, but are not limited to the following:
- The initial company was publicly projected. In other words, the acquired company has poor public relations so, the new management would not want such an image to ride along with the newly acquired entity. Therefore, the need for a change of business name is of utmost importance.
- The former company’s products and services were at a decline as at the time it was acquired or prior to its acquisition. So, the new owners’ need to project their newly acquired firm as an entry-level firm managed by a group of staff and management with proven expertise in the ‘claimed’ field is a good strategy to kick-start with.
- The need to gain new clients/customers and preserving/retaining the old/returning client/customers is of course a reason why a firm might decide to rename its flagship.
- A firm with a poor credit score with the governing body of their respective State, tax laws, tax remittances, and evasion, and so on, also goes through a renaming in an attempt to ‘trick’ the record and forego some of the ‘things’ hanging on the former name.
- A distressed company that is highly indebted might want to go through the process of renaming too to, once again, try to ‘trick’ its creditors with the claim that the company is under new management.
Be that said, a firm (in this regard, its management) has the right to change the name of its entity whenever and however they deem fit for rebranding purpose and/or any other purpose best known to them so long as it fits with the rules, regulations, guidelines and laws of the host community.
According to a source with intimate knowledge of the situation, Facebook is intending to alter its company name this week to reflect its focus on establishing the metaverse.
The upcoming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes to discuss at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th but could be announced sooner, is designed to signify the internet giant’s aim to be known for more than just social media and all of its associated problems. The makeover would most likely present the blue Facebook app as one of many products managed by a parent business that also oversees Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and other companies. However, a Facebook spokesperson declined to comment as regards the recent happenings and the news making round in the media.
Facebook currently has over 10,000 staff working on consumer devices such as augmented reality glasses, which Zuckerberg expects will become as common as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that “we will effectively move from people seeing us as largely a social media company to being a metaverse company”, over the next several years.
Related Articles
A renaming might also help to further distinguish Zuckerberg’s futuristic work from the tremendous criticism Facebook is presently facing over its current social platform. Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistleblower, recently revealed a cache of embarrassing internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified before Congress about them. Antitrust regulators in the United States and internationally are attempting to break up Facebook, and public trust in the company’s operations is eroding.
Facebook is not the only well-known technology business to alter its name as its goals grow. Google reorganised altogether under the Alphabet holding company in 2015, partly to show that it was no longer just a search engine, but a global conglomerate with subsidiaries developing self-driving cars and health-care technology. In 2016, Snapchat changed its name to Snap Inc., the same year it began referring to itself as a “camera company” and unveiled its first set of Spectacles camera eyeglasses.
The new Facebook corporate name, I am told, is a highly guarded secret within the firm’s gates and is not widely known, even within the company’s whole top leadership. Horizon, the name of the still-unreleased VR version of Facebook-meets-Roblox that the business has been creating for the past few years, may be a contender. Shortly after Facebook demoed a version for workplace collaboration dubbed Horizon Workrooms, the app’s name was changed to Horizon Worlds.
Apart from Zuckerberg’s remarks, Facebook has been quietly laying the basis for a bigger focus on future technology. It established a specialized metaverse team this past summer. Andrew Bosworth, the company’s head of AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality), has recently been promoted to Chief Technology Officer. Only a few days ago, Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 more people in Europe to work on the metaverse.
This summer, Zuckerberg told Casey Newton of The Verge that the metaverse is “going to be a significant focus, and I think that this is really going to be a big part of the next chapter for the way that the internet evolves after the mobile internet. I believe it will also be the next important chapter for our firm, since we will be doubling down on this.”
Complicating matters is the fact that, despite Facebook’s recent promotion of the metaverse, it is still a poorly understood notion. Neal Stephenson, a science fiction novelist, created the word to depict a virtual environment where individuals can escape from a dismal reality. It is now being embraced by one of the world’s most powerful and divisive corporations, which will have to justify why its own virtual world is worth exploring.
