Is Facebook’s rebrand just a strategic move to create a portfolio of CEO’s that allow the founder to move into a space that is removed from scandal and scrutiny?

Facebook has officially announced that it will change its name to meta, signalling a new era for the social media giant.

The name change follows months of scrutiny and growing public distrust around the social media giant.

The shift will see a new focus on becoming a computing platform specialising in virtual reality and the metaverse.

Chief Executive and Founder Mark Zuckerberg says the metaverse is the next frontier and from now on the company will be metaverse first, not Facebook first.

But Facebook is under fire – so is Zuck looking to play the blame game?

Mat Cole from ACT media ventures this sort of re architecture of their portfolio, allows the appointment of CEOs for WhatsApp, CEO for Facebook and a CEO for Instagram, but Zuck will always controls the company

“Expect a new Facebook CEO, who will be the one facing the senate enquiries, while the founder and actual leader of Facebook will be of wearing Facebook glasses on morning television”

COLE SAID.

“Mark Zuckerberg as a founder, can now move away and create a shield from all the bad press that they’re getting.”

But behind the speeches, feel good stories about Facebook’s growth and ultimately – a rebrand, what will change?

Cole says the data policies across all of their business will not change and has not changed.

“By allowing him to pull in CEOs, what it does is every time that there is a controversy, and Facebook has a an amazing history of 10 years, you no longer have consistent controversies,” he told ticker.

“Instead of turning up and sitting in front of Congress and be grilled, he can say no, not me. Go and speak to the CEO of Facebook, or go and speak to the CEO of WhatsApp, or go and speak to the CEO of Instagram.”

Are people all going to flock to this idea of virtual reality?

“We’re not all going to buy VR goggles and jump into work. Like that’s that’s just not going to happen,” Cole says.

“Facebook’s users are an older group, which have a less likelihood of being able to jump in and buy virtual reality headsets. They’re just not going to do that.”

Cole says the Metaverse is part of a broader conversation, “a disconnected, interoperable, landscape of technology.”

“So I can take my avatar from work, play, to dating, and all of that can happen in the metaverse. It doesn’t happen in these, centralised environments. And that’s what Facebook talking about.”

“So it’s quite wrong in terms of what the metaverse is. So I think, it doesn’t always have to be in VR goggles, which is a lot of what Facebook is, is talking about adoption being predicated upon.”