Facebook may change its name but it’s still the same company

There are two factors wrong with Facebook’s noted system for a identify change that far better displays its job in the higher-tech “metaverse.”

Very first, the metaverse? Significantly?

2nd, who do they assume they are fooling?

It’s continue to Fb, for goodness sake, that monstrous, monopolistic organization that would like to undermine your privateness at every transform, spread lies and, Huge Tobacco-style, hook younger persons for lifetime on its electronic solutions.

“Consumers are not stupid,” said Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, a internet marketing professor who specializes in branding at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By which he means Facebook’s just about 3 billion people all over the world are nicely knowledgeable of the seemingly countless controversies — the privacy concerns, the misinformation, the turning a blind eye to despise speech, racism and political dishonesty.

“The only way for Facebook to go outside of its controversies is to radically clear up its act,” Steenkamp instructed me. “And in any case, even if Fb does alter its corporate title, its principal merchandise would nonetheless be termed Facebook.”

The Verge, a tech website, noted Wednesday that Fb may announce a corporate name change as before long as next 7 days, citing “a source with immediate information of the issue.”

The shift “is intended to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be recognised for additional than social media and all the ills that entail,” the Verge claimed. Fb declined to comment for the tale.

Although Facebook’s intentions continue being unclear, the greatest guess among the advertising and marketing industry experts is that the company will abide by Google’s illustration and produce an ambiguously named mum or dad business to oversee its several functions.

These incorporate the namesake social media system, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, Facebook’s virtual-reality technique.

There’s speculation that Fb will simply call the mum or dad corporation Horizon to someway capture a sense of, you know, broad technological know-how horizons, a limitless foreseeable future, no matter what.

This is wherever the buzzy plan of the metaverse enters the image. The phrase was coined by writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel “Snow Crash.” Assume of it as “cyberspace” — an additional phrase with sci-fi roots — on steroids.

If the guardian organization is identified as Horizon, the company’s different divisions, in switch, could be renamed “Horizon Facebook” or “Horizon Instagram” or variations thereof. Or they could stay unchanged.

And, of program, scandal-susceptible Facebook’s main government, Mark Zuckerberg, would no more time be the CEO of Facebook when he’s testifying right before disgruntled lawmakers, as seems to be normally the circumstance.

He’d be the Horizon CEO, which in idea would insulate the core Fb brand name from whatsoever missteps he’s been termed to account for. Or he’d no more time be the poor sap who has to remedy for Facebook. The head of the division would be in the hot seat.

Which is a single possibility. One more is that the firm essentially may want to completely rechristen alone in hopes of leaving previous issues at the rear of and rebooting its company image.

“It’s vital for Facebook to get the next era hooked on its technologies,” claimed Barbara E. Kahn, a advertising professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The large concern for young men and women is that Fb is Granny’s system, your parents’ platform,” she advised me. “They will need to get absent from that.”

A new company id, Kahn observed, would have the twin gains of turning the web site on past scandals and repositioning the organization in the digital marketplace as a cooler, fresher merchandise.

“They have to have to get people today to feel about the manufacturer in a diverse way,” she mentioned.

We have found this many instances prior to. Most likely the most well known example of a corporation trying to reinvent by itself by changing its corporate apparel was when tobacco big Philip Morris renamed by itself Altria Team in 2003.

The enterprise claimed the swap much better reflected its portfolio of firms. But it was not kidding any individual. The Philip Morris brand experienced developed toxic immediately after unlimited tobacco controversies.

The Altria brand, in the meantime, was pristine. So the corporation known as alone that — and held on marketing cigarettes.

We have observed this more than and about. Andersen Consulting (with ties to auditor Arthur Andersen of Enron fame) modified its name to Accenture. ValuJet Airways, which was grounded in 1996 just after a crash that killed all 110 persons aboard, modified its identify to AirTran Airways.

“Changing a brand name name totally is not a popular event,” stated Richard J. Lutz, a marketing and advertising professor at the College of Florida.

“It is pricey,” he mentioned. “When corporations do that, it is generally due to the drive — or urgent require — to length on their own from undesirable associations.”

He cited new title changes for troubled, racially tinged brand names these types of as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s.

Facebook, if the name-alter reports are appropriate, would just be pursuing in this grand custom of saying to the environment that all’s well simply because, um, there’s a new title on the door.

“It would allow for them to refresh them selves,” mentioned Matthew Quint, a director of the Middle on World Manufacturer Management at Columbia University.

“It would permit them to show that they see a upcoming of unique systems, all swarming together,” he stated.

Yeah, Alright. Swarming technologies. Received it.

But there is in all probability a a lot more realistic motive at perform right here.

“Yes, they need to have to length themselves a bit from the Facebook brand,” claimed Timothy Calkins, a advertising and marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Faculty of Administration.

“But what this definitely would do is explain to buyers and personnel that things are various,” he mentioned. “Corporate branding really matters most at that level.”

It also perhaps would assist with recruiting new expertise. Up-and-coming coders who may possibly not want to get the job done for Facebook could be much more amenable to the strategy of doing work for Horizon.

But, at root, it’s continue to Fb.

And Fb is nevertheless a company behemoth that has demonstrated time and yet again that it cares much additional about revenue than it does about safeguarding its billions of end users.

It can connect with itself Horizon if it needs. Heck, it can contact alone Planet Peace, or Puppies and Kittens.

Until the corporation would make meaningful adjustments, it is even now not to be trusted.