The headlines of many news articles reported that the founder of Facebook has rebranded the social network. Some users decided that they would have to get used to the new name Meta. We checked whether the social network was indeed renamed.
On the evening of October 28 and 29, 2021, the entire world press wrote that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced at a presentation the new name Meta, as well as the construction of a “metaverse.” Runet did not lag behind. Headings "Gazeta.ru" And "Izvestia" read: Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta, title "Moskovsky Komsomolets" — “Why is Facebook changing its name to Meta.” A "Secret of the Company" turned out to be most succinctly: “Zuckerberg renamed Facebook.” Some media and news text reportedthat Mark Zuckerberg announced the renaming of the social network.
It should be noted that most major media still came out with correct headlines, making it difficult for confusion and misunderstanding. For example, Meduza: “Facebook will change its name to Meta.” Or TASS: “Facebook has changed its name to Meta.”
What kind of confusion are we talking about here? The fact is that the social network Facebook, although the flagship, is only one of products company, which until recently was called Facebook Inc. In addition to it, the corporation owns the photo service Instagram, the WhatsApp messenger, as well as a number of other brands and services. So, rebranding touched only the parent company, legal entity. And the names of products, including the social network Facebook, remained no changes.
Most likely, ordinary users will not need to get used to anything. It is unlikely that most users of the Internet search engine Google know the name of the Alphabet Inc. holding company, to which it belongs. At the same time, the same holding owns a number of other companies and products, including YouTube. Previously, the entire parent company was called the flagship service Google Inc. We can say that Zuckerberg simply repeated the path of his senior colleagues and competitors in the Internet industry, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Thus, it remains to be concluded that a significant part of the world's audience has been misled by ambiguous headlines in many media outlets, as well as incorrect information in some of them. The name of the social network Facebook remains the same, and only the company that owns it has been renamed.
Mostly not true
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