For days there has been speculation about a possible renaming of Facebook, now it is official: The American Internet giant will be called “Meta” in the future.

This was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday at the in-house virtual conference “Connect”.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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With the name he ties his company closely to the strategy he has recently increasingly propagated for a “metaverse” or “metaverse”, a virtual space that he describes as the “next generation of the Internet” and “successor to the mobile Internet” - and that “Next chapter” for his company.

The new name is intended to reflect this orientation.

"Metaverse first, not Facebook first"

The renaming is tantamount to a degradation of the name Facebook and ensures that the service that is the root of the company will only be one of many different products, alongside platforms such as Instagram and Whatsapp.

Zuckerberg said he had thought a lot about his corporation's identity.

Although Facebook is one of the most used products "in the history of the world" and an "icon", the name reflects less and less the breadth of the company.

“Our brand is so closely linked to a single product that it cannot possibly represent everything that we do today, let alone in the future.” It is therefore time to give yourself a new brand identity.

In the future, the company will be “Metaversum first, not Facebook first”.

A new logo is also associated with the name change, reminiscent of the infinity symbol.

Zuckerberg initially left it open whether there should be other structural changes.

With the new identity, Facebook is shedding the name associated with many controversies surrounding the company. And the group is doing this at a particularly turbulent time. He recently came under pressure through revelations by the whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee who accuses him of doing too little to counter the damage caused by his platforms, although he is well aware of the risks. Haugen has backed up these allegations with thousands of internal documents that have become the subject of a whole series of investigative stories. The whistleblower affair is making waves around the world, Haugen has appeared before the American Congress and this week also before the British Parliament.

Facebook and Zuckerberg have defended themselves against the allegations.

Only a few days ago, the CEO spoke of a “coordinated effort” to paint a “wrong picture” of his company.

No other company combats harmful content as “effectively” as Facebook.

At the event on Thursday, he did not address the controversy directly, but tried to show his vision for the metaverse.

It was only a possible nod to the negative headlines when he said, “I know a lot of people will say this is not the time to focus on the future and I admit there are important things that need to be worked on in the present. "