When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, in 2004, was a student reading book at Harvard: The Face Book. Twenty years ago, buying 90, and billions of dollars after that, Facebook has become history. Now, it wants a new one.
Zuckerberg is expected to announce the company’s new name next week at Facebook Connect, the company’s annual general meeting, as the first to explain About. The new name – meaning to include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and the rest of the family – will describe the company as a conference, with more ambitions than social media. The Facebook app may be the cornerstone of the company, but Zuckerberg has made it clear that the company’s future lies in metaverse.
But what is a name? In the case of Facebook, it comes with strong relationships, tarnishing the image, being monitored by Congress, and not being approved by the general public. Facebook name has come up “lack of confidence”In its recent actions, including its growing cryptocurrency growth. By using the company name, Facebook can give itself the opportunity to deal with this. It would not be the first company to be a behemoth looking for the best with a new moniker: encircling companies do it regularly.
However, marketing experts – as well as well-known experts on Twitter – do not believe that restructuring the company can help solve problems, or isolate itself from the latest developments.
“Everyone knows what Facebook is,” says Jim Heininger, founder of Rebranding Experts, a company that specializes in restorative institutions. “The most effective way for Facebook to solve the problems that have plagued its brand in the past is to improve, without trying to change its name or establish new infrastructure.”
Facebook’s self-proclaimed idea comes as soon as the whistle blows Frances Haugen releases thousands of pages to Wall Street Journal, exposing the company without regard for the public good. The notes were encouraging hearing on Capitol Hill, where Congress has previously been debating the potential to improve Facebook or tackle their conference.
The new name could give the company a boost. But “changing the name does not restore history,” says Anaezi Modu, Rebrand’s founder and CEO, who advises companies on color change. Advertising is based on the company’s operations, culture, and capabilities, rather than its name, logo, or advertising. “Unless Facebook has the idea of solving many of its problems, just changing the name is useless. On the contrary, it can only make things worse.”
Modu said the renaming was logical to describe the company’s organization, as some corporations live. When Google completely reversed in 2015, it named its parent company Label, to reflect its size beyond its search engines (Google) to integrate several others (DeepMind, Waymo, Fitbit, and Google X, among others). Most people still think of a company like Google, but the name Alphabet is a sign of the company’s relationship.