Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to unveil the tech giant’s new name today as part of a major rebranding effort
It is reported by US tech news site, The Verge, who claim that the entrepreneur will make the new name change public by announcing it at the company's annual Connect conference.
Facebook has been ‘heavily’ promoting the metaverse in recent weeks as Mark Zuckerberg wants to be known for building it.
Former employee, Frances Haugen, recently leaked thousands of documents and gave testimony to US senators this month in which she said Facebook put “astronomical profits before people”.
The term ‘metaverse’ is used to describe the concept of a future of the Internet, made up of 3D virtual spaces linked into a virtual universe.
It was coined by Neal Stephenson’s in his 1992 sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, referring “to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space.”
Zuckerberg told his employees at the end of June about the new “ambitious initiative”.
The name change would mean Facebook would be put under an umbrella like sister platforms Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus.
It comes as Facebook has been facing intense scrutiny over its business practices, and for PR crisis such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
It will follow in the footsteps of a similar move by Google in 2015 who moved under parent company Alphabet.
A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company doesn’t “comment on rumor or speculation.”
The Verge has stated: “Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 employees to work on the metaverse in Europe”
“In the coming years, I expect people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social media company to seeing us as a metaverse company,” Zuckerberg said in July.
