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Facebook plans to change its name as part of company rebrand
- Threeve303 5y agoIt’s either the actions of the company or the name. Must be the name, right?
- mbg721 5y ago"No, you cannot call yourselves 'Meryl Streep.' " "Maybe she'll be flattered!"
- dredmorbius 5y agoDiscussed yesterday as well (57 comments), from The Verge, which is the Guardian's source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28926089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28926089
- throwawayboise 5y agoYou can call it shit, turds, or feces -- it's all the same thing.
- bitwize 5y agoSeems like this name change is to run from their past sins -- like how Electric Boat became General Dynamics, or like how Unbounded Solutions became BrighterBrain.
- grae_QED 5y agoDoes this stiff actually work? I feel like if your reputation is bad enough that a name change doesn't really do anything. For example: no one thought Academi was anything other than Blackwater. In my mind those those names have always been synonymous.
- DonHopkins 5y agoIf Mark Zuckerberg trademarks "Metaverse", William Gibson should trademark "Mark Zuckerberg". https://www.wired.com/2015/04/virtual-reality-and-the-pioneers-of-cyberspace/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/virtual-reality-and-the-pionee... >Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace: 25 years before Oculus, John Perry Barlow described what it was like “being in nothingness.” >[...] And they were ready to make a product. They’d made a promo video starring Timothy Leary. Gullichsen had even registered William Gibson’s term “cyberspace” as an Autodesk trademark, prompting an irritated Gibson to apply for trademark registration of the term “Eric Gullichsen.” By June, they had an implementation which, though clearly the Kitty Hawk version of the technology, endowed people with an instantaneous vision of the Concorde level. [...]
- janlukacs 5y agowash away the shame? won't work.
- Ajay-p 5y agoHow about "FaceReality"
- 1MachineElf 5y agoFor them, FaceTheFacts and FaceTheMusic would be amusing trademarks too.
- akudha 5y agoWeTheCreepy with gollum as the mascot would fit too
- iamacyborg 5y agoMy Precious (advertising dollars)
- rapnie 5y agoI thought more like Zuckerscape Playgrounds.
- jenny91 5y agoRebranding as Horizon? That'd be no less "we are creepy and intrude on your whole life" than Facebook...
- zahma 5y agoThat’s the point. They’re focusing on the metaverse now. People who finally realized Facebook is no good will fall right back into their hands for the next shiny object used to extract data about their being.
- sgregnt 5y agoI believe the way this answer is stated, paints a very biased picture. Allow me to provide an alternative vision, which I believe is shared by many (though not as vocal as the other opinion). So, let me share my hopes here: Maybe some people will finally see through media propaganda, and conformism to realize how much value Facebook brings to their life and how is (US based) facebook is better than other alternatives. These users will hopefully embrace metaverse to have even better interaction will other human beings across the world for business, please and joy, which will allow the to have reacher more meaningful life experiences
- zahma 5y agoYes I am biased. I loathe Facebook and all it stands for. I don’t have a problem with the metaverse even if it’s probably going to be the thing that ages me. My problem is that Facebook will inevitably use it to colonize more data that they do not have a right to. If a simple name change is in order, it’s only because people still don’t understand what exactly Facebook is. Its creation wasn’t to be Good. Its creation was, and ever will be, to exploit these data to the detriment of society which overwhelmingly outweighs whatever good it makes.
- sgregnt 5y agoWell "biased" means that you are not doing an independent impartial assessment of the facts. So admittedly, you're saying your opinion is based off something other than pure facts? I believe I do know how facebook operates to a good approximation, how ranking system operate, and how users data is used for ads targeting and content ranking. Based off my knowledge I think what you write here is a gross misrepresentation of the situation, I do try to be unbiased.
- diogenesjunior 5y agoIf only they would `rm -rf remove *` inside the website's code directory instead. One can only wish.
- neartheplain 5y ago>Under the plans, Facebook would change the name of its holding company but not that of its eponymous social media platform, known internally as the “big blue app”. Nothing to see here. Just another Alphabet-type holding company.
- h2odragon 5y ago"Ministry of Information?" Ultimate Arbiter of Reality? Can Zuck resist the urge to proclaim himslef a God? How about High Pontiff of the new Holy SanFransican Church?
- pjmorris 5y agoThe Kwisatz Haderach?
- sgregnt 5y agoI thought he is pushed to censor by the US and other governments, and practically does not have much room for freedom.
- aserdf 5y agohe has more money than god - if not for a god complex, what reason to continue with the status quo? he can do literally anything on or off this earth that is within the realm of possibility.
- sgregnt 5y agoFacebook is not owned by Zuck he is just a CEO. I thought this is obvious so didn't stress this fact writing Zuch but meaning FB. Facebook is a public company and as such this company is owned by public. When I say Zuck does not have freedom I mean that facebook stacked holder do not have freedom, they either accept the rule pushes by the government or loose their investment i.e. loose the company, Zuch has nothing to do with it.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.md/fIv2l https://archive.md/fIv2l
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jaywalk 5y agoOh yes, one of the steps large companies inevitably take after their reputation is tarnished beyond repair. The problem here is that nobody cares what the parent company of Facebook is called, just like nobody cares what the parent company of Google is called. It's Facebook and Google.
- chubot 5y agoOne renaming I can recall is Philip Morris -> Altria, although apparently a new Philip Morris was spun off, so it exists again.
- sorokod 5y agoMay work to some extent, remember Blackwater? Blackwater => Xe Services => Academi
- pdpi 5y agoAn accidental case of that is Accenture. It split with Arthur Andersen (and got renamed) just a couple of years before the Enron Scandal broke.
- snarf21 5y agoIsn't this really just a Google > Alphabet kind of change? I assume there will be a new umbrella that FB, IG and WApp will just be things inside as well as pushing things like Oculus at more of a separate concern.
- dschuetz 5y agoI suggest "hatebook" as the new company name if they mean it being transparent.
- notafraudster 5y agoThe metaverse stuff is really, really embarrassing. Second Life has existed for 20 years and it's a fun novelty. Adding advertising and branded content and making it cost more because of high end hardware requirements and making it slower and more difficult to interface with because it's VR/AR instead of using existing interfaces is not an improvement; just like adding branded content and sticking it in the skeletal husk of a bad shooter game for 12 year olds wasn't an improvement when Epic did it. All the CEOs who buy into this metaverse shit keep talking about the universe of possibilities, but the only possibility they're pursuing is building a Times Square Wal-Mart. Even crazier, most of them approvingly point to the execrable "Ready Player One" as an example of a vision to deliver on. No, I'm sorry, a horny 15 year old shaving his body hair so he can be more aerodynamic in VR while engaging in extended self-congratulatory monologues about what a Nice Guy he is for not being repulsed by his "Rubenesque" girlfriend while he recites lines from Ghostbusters in a series of completely incoherent "memba this???" vignettes, is not a vision for the future. It's a bummer because I think there probably are legitimate uses of VR/AR telepresence as the next frontier of video calling, which would seem to be right in line with Facebook's stated mission of connecting the world. But no, we'll get an exceedingly shitty videogame instead. Can't wait for them to power it all by NFTs.
- Kiro 5y agoLong comment just to say it's not for you. I am excited but wish it was pioneered by someone else than Facebook.
- nikk1 5y agoWe are pioneering on Twitter and Discord. Look into Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
- mchaynes 5y agoFundamentally the profit motive ruins true innovation
- browningstreet 5y agoMade me wonder what Scoble’s on about these days. This was his latest obsession last time I looked.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 5y agoIt honestly makes sense to name the company something else than their first product, especially as they now have multiple other products with similar user numbers.
- diomio 5y agoBooky McBookFace
- ciconia 5y ago"Facepalm"
- barberpole 5y ago"Snakehead"
- rvz 5y agoFecebook - Steve Jobs.
- amelius 5y agohttps://9to5mac.com/2021/05/04/steve-jobs-facebook-emails-app-store/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/04/steve-jobs-facebook-emails-ap...
- tobyscammell 5y agoMeta.com
- aman-thakral 5y agoRecently updated too: https://whois.whoisxmlapi.com/lookup-report/1pRKXVnN2w https://whois.whoisxmlapi.com/lookup-report/1pRKXVnN2w
- slater 5y ago^ my money's on this.
- babelfish 5y agoAlready owned by CZI, too
- wombatmobile 5y agoImagine if instead of or in addition to changing the name of the corporation, its head changed his whole ethos. Imagine if he learned the value and intrinsic satisfaction of facilitating happiness, respect, and connection to humanity, and made these the central tenets of the platform. Imagine if profitability fell a little, but not enough to stop the new ethos.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoI say, you're a dreamer.
- gfodor 5y agoThey’re not the only one.
- laszlokorte 5y agoThey hope one day you will join them... and dont forget to press the like button, subscribe to the channel and hit the bell to get all the notifications
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DrammBA 5y agoThat is a level of existential flexibility not yet known to mankind.
- whymauri 5y agoThey can hire 20k engineers to build a doomed-to-fail metaverse that most of the world neither wants nor understands, but they can't dedicate the same headcount to making their platform healthier. Incredible.
- breakfastduck 5y agoIts unhealthiness directly correlates to its profitability, so nothing to do with capability.
- ezconnect 5y agoThey will name it Universe Inc.
- tgv 5y agoOr Megadodo, and develop space ships in order to move to Ursa Minor.
- phgn 5y agoIt's baffling to me that people still use the main Facebook app. It has gotten too big for its original purpose. I suppose if you curate your friends carefully and only share personal things it can be useful - but that's not the type of content that gets popular. Instagram as a way to share moments I can understand, and WhatsApp is a utility not a social network.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoThis is exactly what they had. Curated friend lists. You could see what select groups of your friends are up to. They were somewhat limited but good enough to keep facebook useful. They killed that in 2018, and lost me as a "customer" at that point. I still have messenger to talk to friends but they lost all the ad revenue from me. Whatever that amounted to :)
- SonicScrub 5y agoThere is a browser extension that automatically unfollows everything on Facebook for you. I used this extension and then re-followed the handful of people I actually care about. It brought Facebook back to the early ~2010s era. Gone are all the useless memes, embedded ads, "news" articles, and daily ramblings by people I don't care about. Instead it's a tool I can use to keep up to date with my friends and loved ones. My feed even has an end again. Only this time the "end" says: "Something went wrong. This may be because of a technical error that we're working to get fixed. Try reloading this page." Here's a link. I highly recommend it. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-on-face/pijkodjelolnmbehifeokihlodnajela?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-...
- Supermancho 5y agoI unfollowed everything on Facebook the old fashioned way. I deleted my Facebook profiles. There is enough news out there to eat up each day without it.
- SonicScrub 5y agoCongrats. Pat your self on the back. So brave... This does nothing to help the people that enjoyed the functionality of the early Facebook and would like to configure their page to return to that, rather than dropping it entirely.
- easton 5y ago"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation." - Don Draper.
- jl6 5y agoIf I was losing faith in the long term sustainability of my core product, and wanted to start hedging by branching out into new spaces with new brands, a rename of the holding company would be my first move.
- lefty2 5y agoHow about "Facey McBookFace"?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diego_moita 5y agoI think Facebook has, by far, the best implementation of AI in tech today. No, really! I know the tricks of AI and even I, sometimes, get tricked into thinking that Zuckerberg is an actual and real human being, not just an AI bot faking empathy, decency and ethics. They pass the Turing test, with honors. That's how well they do it! :)
- marban 5y agoHades comes to mind to use as the holding name.
- themodelplumber 5y agoI can see why it might be frustrating to run a company full of different efforts, some of which are intended to be brand new or a change in direction, but nevertheless remain known as the one blue thing. Hopefully this also allows Zuckerberg to stay technologically strategic, where his gifts want him to be, as opposed to mired in questions of ethical standards for platforms used by teens and children. (Ideally an ethical platform could then also be cultivated through some of that technological power given back to community as well...In some ways one of the biggest hurdles to jump in the future is IMO allowing for such ethics systems to develop in a standardized, yet diverse fashion. If everybody has to use the same admin and moderation system the same way, for example, it incentivizes abuse by power users. Each new community or group will have its own psychological dynamic and deserves the opportunity to get off the ground without being pulled down into platform-sameness by a possibly angry or bitter set of power users.)
- elliekelly 5y agoThe window of opportunity for Zuckerburg/Facebook to run “an ethical platform” has long since closed. The only ethical play Zuck has left is to pull the plug and that will never happen.
- 14 5y agoThey can become just like Nestlé trying to hide who they are through countless different names so it is hard to follow who the parent company is.
- ddtaylor 5y agoWhatever name they want to call it I still refuse to use social media. It's a cancer and I'm happier without it.
- bil7 5y agook hacker news commenter
- tytrdev 5y agoLolol
- ddtaylor 5y agoThere is a big difference between things like focused forums / discussion boards and social media. On HN and Reddit I engage with people about specific topics we have shared interests in. On social media (Facebook) you're either subjected to opinions about divisive topics or you exist in an echo chamber =/
- dustinmoris 5y agoDeadbook
- OneTimePetes 5y agoIntroducing the "InYourFacebook"
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoNorth Central Positronics
- jdlyga 5y ago"The Verge reported that the new name for the holding company could be linked to Horizon" How about Verizon? That's a creative name.
- Alex3917 5y agoWhen is the last time you saw two people at a party adding each other on FB? It's been a pretty long time. Probably no other option of FB at this point.
- CamelCaseName 5y ago> Facebook would change the name of its holding company but not that of its eponymous social media platform
- mtalantikite 5y ago"Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, has said he now takes his Monday morning meetings in the metaverse with a virtual table and whiteboard." I once had a short consulting engagement with a VR company that spun out of Second Life and had to be "in world" the entire time. They had made a VR office space for the dev team to congregate in. The first time I beamed into a meeting room and saw a dozen blank faced avatars staring back at me I got filled with anxiety. I've been working remote for 13 years and I can't remember another time I felt anxious like that running a remote meeting. The people were great and the spatial audio was interesting, but I found it really distracting to have to be in a VR world when really I just wanted to be in emacs coding. I felt mentally drained by the end of every day, worse than being in an office working a full day. I felt "always on" in a way I don't in an office (and certainly don't when remote). Maybe there's a niche here, but it's really not for me.
- gfodor 5y agoYou’re presuming the technology and software is fixed. It isn’t - there are continual leaps forward and it isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
- mcintyre1994 5y agoIf they're already rolling Nick Clegg out to defend their metaverse ambitions then they can't think they're going to be very good for humanity.
- goldenManatee 5y agoUgh Nick Clegg. No doubt a future seat as Harvard/Stanford Dean, if not just UK PM. The man talks out both ends - impressively so, I might add.
- phatfish 5y agoThe UK already knows he talks out of both ends. His name is toxic here, Facebook oviously don't care much about converting more people in the UK to the cause with him involved.
- amelius 5y agoPropagandaBook
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- skipfitz 5y ago"Fakeblock" is a great name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_p3tkGPPw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_p3tkGPPw8
- bena 5y agoBecause Google changed to Alphabet and everyone calls it that and never uses Google when they talk about who owns DeepMind or Fitbit. I mean, it's probably necessary for corporate structure or whatever, but no matter what they rebrand as, it'll still be "Facebook".
- meh2frdf 5y agoI don’t think anyone talks about Fitbit anymore ...
- Barrin92 5y ago>The Verge reported that the new name for the holding company could be linked to Horizon, a word used in at least two virtual reality products that the company is developing. Did we just accidentally cross over into Shadowrun lore? Everyone's talking about the whole corporate dystopia thing but I didn't think we'd be this literal about it, they could just take the slogan as well while they're at it https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Horizon https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Horizon
- ID1452319 5y agoTheFacebook
- martini333 5y agoFaceplant?
- Jemm 5y agoWilling to put money on them changing to FB.
- pkulak 5y agoRumor is, it will be the Scheinhardt Wig Company.
- d3ntb3ev1l 5y agoNew name: meta mark
- lostgame 5y agoRather than fixing the issues behind the brand, just change the name?
- the_snooze 5y agoThis may sound radical, but have they tried being decent ethical people instead?
- jpdus 5y agoOn that topic by M.G. Siegler on 10/6: "Facebook is not dying as a business, but they’ve died as a brand. The company needs to move on to ‘what’s next’ as quickly as possible to distance themselves from the social network. This is nothing new, of course — I wrote this over six years ago. They’ve more or less been trying to do this for years. But even in creating an umbrella company, they called it ‘Facebook’, which was dumb. It was the exact opposite of what they should have done. Because, again, Facebook, the brand, is over." https://500ish.com/facebook-is-too-big-fail-eb8c143a9afc https://500ish.com/facebook-is-too-big-fail-eb8c143a9afc
- alangibson 5y agoFully agree about Fb the brand being dead. That's a stink that's not coming off. I think the business has good prospects. They're just learning how to monitize Ig and haven't begun to wring cash out of Whatsapp. Does anyone really think though that Fb the company has what it takes to produce another world beating product? Call me pessimistic, but their best shot is buying up innovative companies and not strangling the cool out of them (ie Oculus)
- Duralias 5y ago> Does anyone really think though that Fb the company has what it takes to produce another world beating product? Is what they are trying with the Metaverse stuff. Kinda weird considering that buying "the next big thing" has worked so well for them before.
- alangibson 5y agoThe libra fiasco should make anyone wonder if Fb is going to be able to sell the public on a big new project. At this point it feels like users tolerate Fb purely due to the network effects they have.
- chadlavi 5y agoThey don't have to, they just have to buy it Edit: yeah, what you said.
- tehabe 5y agoI wonder what will inspire Zuckerberg for the name. Google founders Page and Brin were apperantly inspired by the ABC-Straße in Hamburg, where the German Google offices are located.
- d3ntb3ev1l 5y agoFacebook is a stupid name to begin with. Aliens would ask “wait it’s not a book with faces in it?”
- lovefeature 5y agoNew name:FaceChance ?
- deltron3030 5y agoA book strapped to your face = vr headset
- rhplus 5y agoSomething like "The Meta Company" seems like the most likely bet here. Zuckerberg already owns meta.org through the Chan Zuckerberg Institute, and meta.com was updated yesterday to redirect to that same site. https://who.is/whois/meta.com https://who.is/whois/meta.com - updated yesterday https://who.is/whois/meta.org https://who.is/whois/meta.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(academic_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(academic_company)
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI hope not. I am so tired of that word. It's one of the most overused words in tech, almost to the point of losing its meaning.
- abhiyerra 5y agoYou know I had the domain metafirm.co and someone purchased it from me on the Sedo marketplace after a year of being on the market on Monday. Wondering if you are right.
- lopis 5y agoDefinitely has potential. Whatever it is, I'm very certain it will be a short, common dictionary word, that will poison its general meaning forever, like how Tesla is not Nikola anymore.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
- htrp 5y agoI would argue that Epic / Fortnite has a leg up on the metaverse than facebook. They are already doing virtual-esque events like that concert and it's only a matter of time before they add the VR/AR aspects.
- astlouis44 5y agoFacebook needs to just buy Epic already.
- johnnycerberus 5y agoTim wouldn't sell. There are higher chances that Epic will be bought by Microsoft or by Sony PlayStation division. Or... they will go the Valve way, by creating their own platforms on open source, see Steam Community, OS, Deck, Index, etc. Many don't know but Steam Workshop and Community are extremely active, many social/creative things are going on across many gaming communities.
- narrator 5y agoNeal Stephenson, having coined the term in his book Snowcrash, is probably getting a good laugh out of this.
- dougmwne 5y agoSomeone needs to organize an HN AMA with Neal once they rename the company Meta and pivot the whole trillion dollar entity into the Snowcrash universe. It's just the sort of thing he would have written himself.
- kavalec 5y agoI suggest "TruthSmash"
- caturopath 5y agoI have been surprised Facebook has experimented so little with diversifying their lines of business. Hopefully by moving their flagship social media platform to be formally one step lower down, more equal with various other lines of business, it will align with a model where they figure out something good to spend their money on.
- pavlov 5y agoFacebook employs over 10,000 people on products that are not consumer social media: Workplace, Portal, Oculus... It's certainly not for lack of investment.
- nelsonic 5y agoFacebook is rebranding because they can no longer control the narrative around their toxic brand. They have tried with "Project Amplify": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-fac... Some branding consultant has calculated that it will be cheaper for them simply re-brand than to try to recover the existing brand.
- mikewarot 5y agoI always take it as a company is trying to hide from its mistakes when they do a rebranding. Long ago, International Harvester rebranded to Navistar, and I knew I'd never want to buy one of their products, ever, as a result. I wonder just how bad the stuff they're trying to hide is.
- RNCTX 5y agoI gotta say I'm really glad that Facebook is all-in on Virtual Reality, because that's the shortest path to the ultimate failure of Facebook and the departure of a lot of its problem children in management. Virtual Reality as a concept is always going to fail.
- jonny_wonny 5y agoVirtual reality as a concept has been validated since the initial release Oculus’s DK1. You are quite behind the times on this one.
- RNCTX 5y agoThe number of users on Steam with a VR headset was hovering around 1% last time I looked, and gaming is their only market outside of porn.
- bloomper123 5y agoThis is a good idea. Their brand is fu*ked right now. All age groups hate facebook for a variety of different reasons. They are synonymous with misinformation and terrible privacy. This is a good move by Facebook.
- TedShiller 5y agoHow about “Creepy+Greedy, Inc”?
- Fordec 5y agoYa'll ever heard of Worldcom? https://youtu.be/KbbZc2pab9k https://youtu.be/KbbZc2pab9k
- laserlight 5y agoSounds like the stunt Google did with Alphabet. Total BS.
- awill 5y agoI have a friend who works at FB, and he says he does standups and other meetings in VR. um.... No thanks.
- therealdrag0 5y agoDoes he work on a VR adjacent team? I'd be surprised if everyone did this, but wouldn't be surprised if some teams are expected a certain amount 'dog-fooding'. I have a friend who works at M$ and always has some broken beta build of windows/IE running.
- bawolff 5y agoFeels a bit clickbait. The headline made it sound like it was rebranding the main app. Instead they're just pulling a google->alphabet, which is much less shocking.
- DisjointedHunt 5y agoDad joke, but they should call themselves "Newton". . . . Because after an Apple whacked them on the head, they started coming to grips with the gravity of the situation :P
- Groxx 5y agoWith the header-ad, page-header, and "support journalism" footer, I literally see less than 10 pixels of whitespace worth of content. That's beyond ridiculous.
- cblconfederate 5y agoIt seems funny to name it Meta, as FB doesn't have anything to do with metaverse. They brought real names to the internet and still cling to that, but that means that instead of infinite personalities you have only one, the boring old personality that you always had and hated.
- dougmwne 5y agoThis is a pretty worthless take from the HN community that Facebook==Bad. I've been watching the investments in VR, and I think it's a pretty bold move and only one that a founder-led company could even do. Fact is that Facebook has been largely responsible for VR up to this point and has sold the vast majority of all the HMDs out there. The VR/AR tech is brimming with possibilities and even a few days spent playing with the Quest 2 makes that obvious for anyone paying attention. They'll soon have 20k employees working on VR/AR. They are releasing a new HMD in a week that's rumored to bring face and eye, and potentially body tracking. They are announcing a company rebrand at the VR conference. Zuck has every indication of being all in on a pivot, from stale and dangerous social media that may soon be regulated out of existence, to fresh new pastures. Tech companies already sit in the middle of so much of our relationships with each other and each one of them delivers a terrible low-bandwidth experience. I believe Facebook's end game here is no less than digital teleportation. Put on a pair of sunglasses and you can be in the room with anyone in the world. It will be radically personal and intimate after decades of impersonal, disconnected, inhumane and isolating tech. And anyway, regardless of outcome, it will surely be more entertaining to watch a trillion dollar company go fully down the rabbit hole of some kind of cyberpunk fantasy than to watch them continue to dig the hole deeper on their society destroying social media tech.
- kixiQu 5y ago> And anyway, regardless of outcome, it will surely be more entertaining to watch a trillion dollar company go fully down the rabbit hole of some kind of cyberpunk fantasy than to watch them continue to dig the hole deeper on their society destroying social media tech. I think the problem is that they seem to be headed towards doing both.
- dougmwne 5y agoYes, they will do both as long as there is money in social media. There will be gobs of money there, up until the point it's made illegal or defanged. I think the probability of that happening continues to increase, either the democracies will save themselves or the future autocracies will do it for them.
- 5y ago
- pixiemaster 5y agoRenaming to „The Circle“
- angellxr 5y agoAppreciate their contributions to the metaverse, but they'll never build "The Metaverse," or "A Metaverse." They definitely will never own the Metaverse. The metaverse is open, collaborative, privacy focused, and free by default. It should be a public good. The walled gardens, and efforts to control are really part of the metaverse, rather than the entire metaverse itself. There are so many other orgs and people working hard on ensuring that it can't be owned. They can hire 100,000 more people, and they still can't own it. It's bigger than that.
- buzzert 5y agoI relate with the platitude, but who is actually working on a free/decentralized metaverse right now? This just seems like something hackers are completely uninterested in, so the corporations will fill the void. This isn't quite like the Internet in the early days, which was born free and decentralized because it was invented by highly motivated hackers.
- ineedasername 5y agoThis reminds me of when Philip Morris Companies changed its name to Altria in part to distance itself from the negative connotation.
- ramphastidae 5y agoComcast is now XFinity!
- stellalo 5y agoInterestingly, this happens ~17 years after Facebook went online, same as what happened with Google/Alphabet in 2015
- agumonkey 5y agoAlready rebranding ? strnge.
- stanfordkid 5y agoSeems right out of the Google -> Alphabet playbook
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- gnicholas 5y agoI wonder if a name change for the holding company would help with recruiting. I can imagine that a lot of people don't want to say "I work at Facebook" — but might be willing to say "I work at [holdco]". Sort of similar to the Google/Alphabet distinction, but FB probably has a worse image among SV types than Google ever has.
- ya3r 5y agoAfter the new name fails to make any significant difference, they will try new CEO.
- kfprt 5y agoThey'll try but with his preferred shares he'll be like a leech that they'll never be rid of.
- mrkramer 5y agoIs this a joke? Zuckerberg won't ever change the name of his first successful and beloved project just like Page won't ever change the name of Google or he already did with Alphabet but you know what I mean(we still all call it Google not Alphabet).
- hardwaregeek 5y agoThe metaverse push shouldn't be a surprise if you've read The Art of Surveillance Capitalism. The first step is to get data from the digital, from our online presences. The second step is to get data from the physical world. Google did this with StreetView and then with Pokemon Go (Niantic started as an internal Google startup). Facebook needs more data and the metaverse is a thinly veiled attempt to get it.
- peter303 5y ago"Faceverse"
- lioeters 5y agoInto the Zuckerverse. Get the Zuck outta here..
- kfprt 5y agoI initially thought this was some kind of april fools joke but no, they're just that desperate.
- launchiterate 5y ago1984
- dorkwood 5y agoI wonder if this means they no longer have to write "Instagram from Facebook" and "Whatsapp from Facebook".
- juanbyrge 5y agoThis feels like the Google Plus fiasco all over again. Throwing an entire company at making a social product that nobody will use. Good luck!
- Arete314159 5y agoThis is what tobacco companies do. RJ Reynolds --> Altria. This is what oil companies do. British Petroleum --> BP. You rebrand because people have a bad taste in their mouth about you.
- snejad123 5y agoA true metaverse will be very difficult to create until we have brain-computer interfaces. All VR devs are entirely focused on the visual/audio output of devices but one very important detail that is missing is the illusory sixth sense, the kinesthetic receptors. You can solve x-y axis movement with treadmills, but how do you simulate z axis movement without anyone getting sick ? This is why a lot of people get nauseous on VR roller-coasters. I personally cannot use a VR device for more than 30 minutes without getting ill. Personally, I think the steps of XR evolution will go like this: (1) VR restricted to stationary games that don't require a lot of movement. The stage we're at right now. (2) AR goggles/glasses are most likely to be more desirable than VR within the next 100 years because they're improvements on the existing world rather than replacements. Workplace tools, heart rate metrics, etc. Basically the first working versions of these will be porting the main apps of iWatch to a glasses interface. (3) Lateral (x-y axis) VR could be improved to provide more immersive entertainment and games. Still nothing groundbreaking, and you're going to be restricted to using a very expensive treadmill. (4) Once brain/computer interfaces are successfully developed and approved by government regulating bodies for production and release, then people can plug into the "metaverse". I'm guessing this is at least 100 years or more away (that might be optimistic too) Also an important thing to note is that the infrastructure needed to support a living metaverse is very important. There is a big question mark on what this is going to look like coming out of a megacorp (especially one as greedy as FB). The internet had the luxury of being open/free/ad-free in the beginning, and had a strong developer community. Apple was successfully able to build a dev community for their iPhone but them and Android are really the only good examples I can think of. People even avoid developing on Microsoft's OS for less restrictive open-source alternatives.
- nikk1 5y agoThey should rename to Innovative Online Industries (IOI), because that is the role he will be playing in the metaverse.
- riffic 5y agogeez, just let this blasted company initiate its own collapse like myspace already. Twitter won't be too far behind.
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- AzzieElbab 5y agoare we getting MANG or HANG instead of FANG?
- rsj_hn 5y agoIf they changed their name to "Goodguys", we'd get GANG
- AzzieElbab 5y agobad guys would be funnier BANG
- goldforever 5y agoChange it to CIA.com
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoSo, nothing like a re-brand[1] to sidestep negative associations. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria#History
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- asteroidimpact 5y agoMay I suggest, "Altria"....oh,..I forgot.