Meta is the new Facebook
FACEBOOK, is there anyone who is not familiar with this word? Facebook was initially launched on 28 Oct 2003 as ‘FaceMash’ by Mark Zuckerberg and his friends. On 4 Feb 2004, it was renamed to Facebook, as we all know it today. Its usage was restricted to few places initially but on 26 Sep 2006, it was opened to everyone with a valid email address. This is from where its journey began and now after almost 17 years of operation, Mr. Zuckerberg again decided to rename the company.
During this long journey, Facebook positioned itself as a social networking platform. It slowly expanded and acquired many other companies like WhatsApp, Instagram, (Well known apps) Oculus VR, Onavo and Beluga (Less known).
On 28 Oct 2021, Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook changed his company’s name to ‘Meta’. For your clarity I should tell you that only the name of the company as a whole is changed. The name of the apps under it like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram & WhatsApp will remain as it is. In this blog we will understand the purpose of this change and its consequences.
Rebranding
Rebranding is when a company wants to change its image in the eyes of its customers by changing brand elements like name, symbol, logo, jingle etc. in order to position themselves differently to the target audience.
As I told you earlier that Facebook has positioned itself as a social networking platform so far in these years and now it wants to change its image.
Social media to Metaverse!!
This is huge…. Let’s understand why Facebook felt the need for rebranding. In my knowledge, there are mainly two reasons-
First, from last few years Facebook is struggling with its deteriorating reputation due to multiple reasons such as spreading of fake news, data security, etc. so, changing the company’s name might help to divert people’s mind from this situation.
Second, Mr. Zuckerberg wants to change his company’s identity. He no more wants it to be known as a social media company. ‘Meta’ is a Greek word which means ‘beyond’ so, he wants to expand his services beyond social media to virtual environment.
Rebranding is not a new concept for such a big company, in 2015 Google also changed its name to Alphabet (parent company). But we all know what we call it today!
“Meta”, this name is in conflict. A company named ‘Meta’ already exists in United States and has asked a good amount of money to free the name. You can very much see the ruffle on twitter to know more about it.
Logo
The new logo is as controversial as its new name. You can find its different colour versions on your Facebook, Messenger, Instagram & WhatsApp apps. The logo is basically an infinity sign, resembling to letter ‘M’ which denotes Meta. The company released the logo in 2D, 3D and animated version. You can see the animated logo wherein all its app’s logos combines to form a new two blue tone infinity logo.
The old Logo “f” represented only the Facebook app, but now the new logo represents all the apps under it. This is a good sign, I guess.
Many other companies also have similar infinity logos. A Berlin based company ‘M-Sense Migrane’ has a very similar logo to that of Meta that has trolled a lot as well, on Twitter.
Now let’s see where all these controversies and conflicts will land Facebook aka Meta!
Consequences
Within the week of Facebook’s rebranding, the company was surrounded by a lot of conflicts and now is trying to overcome the same. Probably, rebranding was done at a wrong time, I think Mr. Zuckerberg is in a hurry! He is saying that they will enter in metaverse where there will be virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. but I think he should have first turned this thought into reality through the changes in the processes of the company before changing the name, so that people could actually relate the name with the change in the processes. I know change is the only constant but at the same time it is difficult to adapt.
For us, Mineral water = Bisleri; Photocopy = Xerox; Noodles = Maggi. Do you understand what I am trying to convey?
Bisleri, Xerox, Maggi are the brand names associated with the products and we recognise those products with these brand names only. This is the power of a brand name. People tends to create memories around brand names so it is very difficult to actually rename a brand in the minds of the people. You can take the example of Google itself; Google changed its name to Alphabet in 2015 but we all still address it as ‘Google’.
The same is going to happen with Facebook according to me. Though, it might expand beyond social media but still it will remain ‘Facebook’ for people.
Now we can just wait and see what will happen next!
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