A new name, a new beginning Facebook to Meta but why?

October 30, 2021    2 min read

We have seen many companies go through rebrands over the years, normally this is just the logo, the image and the changing ethos of a company.

When a company makes a drastic change such as the complete name it’s normally because there are some major issues within the business. Is this the case with Facebook, or is it something different?
Let’s be honest Facebook is so big that changing the name will take a while to sink in and most will still refer to them as Facebook.

Going back many years, who can remember the chocolate bar ‘Marathon’ that became ‘Snickers’ strange, I was always brought up with Marathon, snickers is what it was called when I was in Germany. Still now I just call it snickers. Okay different scale of things.
Quite a few years ago Facebook started to branch out into many different directions, it was no longer just Facebook, they now own ‘Instagram’, WhatsApp, and Messenger. The name Facebook does not really describe the group anymore, so it seems like a perfectly reasonable choice. Put in place a head company of the group and split off each section to its own operation, protecting each section from the other. Normal corporate business sense, to restructure and protect your assets.

But why Meta?

The Metaverse, “Meta”(“Beyond” in ancient Greek).

So taking us into a new digital age beyond what we currently understand, effectively a new world where we can be what we want, when we want. The concept is not new, second life was a game, a digital world, where many people engaged online, had avatars and even built cities, very much like the game ‘the Sims’. I recall a few years ago watching BBC Click, where they spoke about the new ideas for Facebook and having a new world where users interacted as avatars. They demonstrated holding an object then passing that object across to another person on the other side of the world.

Science fiction…No! it was there and, in a way, no different to some of the sharing tech for projecting 3d images to other users.

So what will Meta bring to us, more virtual worlds to play in, more engagement with others? Or will it bring its own new dangers for the safety of children, for the safety of those most vulnerable within society? Could it be used for the good of humankind, as an educational tool, or will it just be used as another social platform with no real substance, an area of escapism and further mental health problems for many.
If we take the issues Facebook currently faces and the revelations brought about by one of their former employees ‘Frances Haugen’, known as the ‘Facebook Papers’. Here is it claimed that Facebook knowingly put profit in front of their obligation to the safety of users.

It will be interesting to see the outcome from this. The Facebook Papers leaked at the end of October 2021seem to have gone a little quiet, so has ‘Meta’ ridden the storm.
When we look at such massive trillion-dollar mega companies, how can anyone hold them to account.
I’ll delve into far more depth on these papers in a later article but for now we know that Facebook will be part of the group ‘Meta’ along with other products, and the Meta, the Metaverse will open a new world of potential, new revenue streams for the giant and who knows what else!