Facebook to rebrand as ‘Meta’

In an open letter, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive and founder of Facebook, said the company’s new name would better represent the future focus of its work, and that the company would become “metaverse-first”.

The metaverse is a potential replacement for the internet which would be made up of shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a virtual universe.

The structure of the Facebook business will not change as a result of its new name, nor will any of the company’s social media apps or products, including the eponymous Facebook platform, change their name.

Users of the company’s apps will also no longer need a Facebook account to access, and the company will report financial results under the Meta branding and name.

“Building social apps will always be important for us, and there’s a lot more to build. But increasingly, it’s not all we do,” wrote Zuckerberg.

“In our DNA, we build technology to bring people together. The metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started.

“Right now our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards.”

The name change also follows on from recent media reports that Facebook’s own internal research found that Instagram was harmful to teenagers.

The whistleblower Frances Haugen has also accused the company’s algorithms of making hate speech and violence on the Facebook platform worse, and called for greater regulation of social media.