Facebook is reportedly planning to change the company’s name. A name reflecting that it’s not merely a social media company, but one that is building grand things like the ‘metaverse’ and cool camera-equipped Ray-Bans. For example, Snapchat became Snap when it started making hardware in 2016. The new name will only be about the trillion-dollar company called Facebook. The eponymous social media platform — which allegedly began as a ‘hot or not’-style website for rating women and turned into a toxic hellscape two decades later — will continue to be called Facebook. The yet-to-be-renamed company will oversee Facebook as just another product like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
On the surface, this appears to be a move to please investors who will feel more confident putting their money in a company that is not associated with a ton of scandals, investigations, and lawsuits. The company’s brand image is arguably at an all-time low at the moment. Plus, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has hurt its ad business just ahead of its earnings call in a few days from now. Lawmakers have intensified their scrutiny into questionable growth hacks by the company. The uproar erupting in the wake of damning internal research leak showing that the company has always prioritized profits over s’ well-being. And thanks to extensive media coverage, the image has been irreparably tarnished in the eyes of s as well. The fix to it all? Change the name.
Setting up a parent company with a different name will give investors some peace of mind. With the bad rep of Facebook now becoming the exclusive property of a single platform, the parent company can now divert investors and creators' attention to other products such as the enigmatic metaverse. But the real game will play out over the next few years, or decades. And it will happen sneakily. The long game is to let the ‘pristine’ parent company take the center stage. Or, temporarily throw the Facebook social media platform under the bus, and let it remain so until the heat from all its scandals goes away.
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This will clear WhatsApp and Instagram of the bad press they get when being labeled as Facebook-owned platforms. Folks who were previously aghast at the idea of 'Facebook metaverse' will be less worried about ing an AR-fueled internet without any visible Facebook links. With time, the image degraded by issues such as data leaks, hate speech, skewed policy enforcement, serving as a medium for spreading vaccine misinformation, genocide calls, violent insurrections, and election meddling will all recede into the past memory. That is, assuming that no new scandals appear on the horizon.
Yet again, the goal is to calm down the investors and ensure that other developments don’t come to a screeching halt, rather than assuring s that it will fix things going forward. Under the guise of an image makeover, it is a desperate attempt to misguide the millions of s hooked to Facebook-owned services. Facebook’s planned move is not a novel strategy, nor is it being implemented for the first time.
When Big Tobacco fell from its perch, Philip Morriss — one of the world's largest tobacco brands — changed the parent company’s name to Altria Group. As the stigma of unhealthy “fried” food started becoming a marketing headache for Kentucky Fried Chicken, the name KFC was officially adopted in 1991. When the perception of donuts as an unhealthy food threatened the Dunkin Donuts brand value as the chain started to dabble with healthier items on the menu, it was rechristened to just Dunkin. Facebook wants to pull something similar by adopting a name that is will be virtually free of any sins or scandals. A new parent company that will nourish all other products and projects that would otherwise get hurt due to their visible Facebook link. Whether s forget it as quickly as Facebook wants them to, remains to be seen.