TECH NEWS – Mark Zuckerberg and his team, Facebook may give the company a new name, which we could know by the end of October…

The Verge reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, that Facebook is preparing a rename to follow the example of Tim Sweeney (Epic Games, Fortnite…), and encompass its ambitions of building a metaverse by using a new name. As they are holding their Connect conference on 28 October this year, the announcement of the new name could happen here, but the site says it could happen earlier. Facebook’s website and app would not change its name, so they could follow the example of Google in 2015 (where the parent company changed its name to Alphabet, without significant change for us…).

In recent months, we’ve already started to see a shift in what Facebook focuses on and how they want us to see them. In an interview with The Verge in July, Mark Zuckerberg has already said, “We will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.” The company has been working on augmented reality (AR) for years, and Zuckerberg confirmed his ambitions when he acquired Oculus in 2014.

At the time, the Facebook chief said, “Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow. Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever and change the way we work, play and communicate.” (Since then, a Facebook registration has become mandatory for full use of Oculus headsets….) It’s been a good seven years since then, and we’ve also survived an hour-long shutdown where over-centralisation dragged Messenger, Instagram and even Oculus devices down with it…

Perhaps the name change is also happening because the Wall Street Journal recently published a series of investigative articles called Facebook Files, where it showed how Facebook and its products negatively impact users, or how it neglected when employees reported when the site assisted content related to drug cartels and ethnic violence. Facebook’s former product manager has also spoken to the US Senate on the issue.

And Facebook’s Newsroom Twitter account reports “Right now, 30+ journalists are finishing up a coordinated series of articles based on thousands of pages of leaked documents. A curated selection out of millions of documents at Facebook can in no way be used to draw fair conclusions about us.” Oh boy.

Source: Gamesindustry