On 28th October, Mark Zuckerburg doubled down on his commitment to be the face of the oncoming metaverse era by signing off on the move to rebrand the parent company, Facebook Inc., to Meta. The hour-long keynote presentation was unveiled at the Connect 2021 conference, where Mark goes over all the fundamental changes the rebranding brings along, as well as exploring his and his company’s vision moving forward. The social media giant is bringing the limelight to their increasing investments and commitment into AR/VR technologies and the growing size of the Facebook Reality Labs. This move has multiple implications, from marketing and finance to technological, and has caused a stir amongst critics and journalists alike.
Facebook aka Meta Company – Highlights
The biggest and clearest sign of a shift in the company’s focus was highlighted by the medium of the presentation itself. Mark Zuckerburg gave the entire presentation and walked the attendees of the conference through all the changes in a serene VR environment. After introducing the rebranding of the parent company to Meta in the first 10 minutes, the rest of the feature was about how the platforms will look, feel and behave as they incorporate VR and AR as the building blocks. The keynote went over multiple pressing concerns of how Meta’s metaverse will incorporate interactions, entertainment, art, merchandising and marketing, and gave an insight into the vision of the future by Zuckerburg and team.
Image Credits: Tegan Reyes (on behalf of Meta)
From its inception, the parent company Facebook Inc. (now Meta), had represented itself as a social media and advertising platform. With the rebranding exercise, the company now identifies itself as a social technologies and metaverse company. This rebranding has no direct implications on the portfolio of applications and platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and other subsidiaries) the company manages, as their name remains unchanged.
In Mark’s interview with the Verge, he states that Meta has become an ecosystem of applications in the last few years, and having their flagship application – Facebook, share the name has led to confusion amongst its users and investors. A similar move had been made by Google in 2015 when they rebranded the parent company as Alphabet. The re-branding is a push to separate the identities and create a clearer distinction between the platforms and the parent organisation.
Image Credits: Tegan Reyes (on behalf of Meta)
While the rebranding is a subtle way to distinguish parts of the social media conglomerate, this transition is more evident in their financial reporting, as moving forward Meta Inc. will report on their two distinct wings – ‘The Family of Apps’ and ‘Reality Labs’. As the portfolio of Meta increases the share of AR/VR tech (Oculus and Reality Labs) investments and the growing workforce in the vertical, this rebranding is a clear signal of the internal shifts in the company that have been years in the making.
After-Meta: Public Reception
The rebranding exercise has stirred a myriad spectrum of views on the matter, the majority of them are leaning on the negative side of the spectrum due to the failing reputation of Facebook, both as a platform and a parent company. With increasing scrutiny on the internal workings of the organisation’s decision making since the ‘Facebook Papers’ leak, many speculate that the rebranding might just be a gimmick to distance the company from the tanking reputation of the platform.
While these rumours were debunked by Mark earlier and were purely speculative, others point out that this move, and the bigger focus of the company to make metaverse a reality, is motivated by wanting to reduce the company’s dependency on competitors such as Google and Apple. As companies that own the app stores on which ‘The Family of Apps’ are downloaded through, Meta has to pay a large 30% commission on its in-app sales to the operating software owners, which in Mark’s words are “stifling innovation and growth”.
Image Credits: Tegan Reyes (on behalf of Meta)
Beyond the reputational issues, re-branding is also being seen with the lens of an embarrassing debacle. The name ‘Meta’ is already an incorporated organisation dealing in AR tech, which the marketing team behind this shift got to know about after their big announcement, and are now trying to salvage the situation by offering $20 million for the naming rights.
What could’ve been a large and eventful day for metaverse and AR/VR enthusiasts around the world, a beacon of the inevitable virtual future, has turned into another rainy day (in the series of rainy days) for the tech giant.
