Facebook May Not Be Facebook Much Longer

If Facebook was trying to spin attention away from its recent woes by stirring up talk of its planned "metaverse" on Monday, Tuesday brought more of the same. This time, the whispers emerge from the Verge, which late last night cited a source claiming that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will announce a name change for the company next week, if not sooner. The supposed moniker shift, which the Verge notes "is meant to signal the tech giant's ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail," would bestow the new name upon the parent company, which would continue to oversee apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and, yes, Facebook.

The Verge reports the move would be akin to what Google did when it rebranded its parent company Alphabet but kept Google as the search engine's name. The outlet speculates that the new Facebook name could involve the word Horizon; the name of the unreleased VR version of the company's "Facebook-meets-Roblox" app that's been in the works for a few years is Horizon Worlds.

The Next Web—which notes that the "rebranding makes sense" but also "stinks of nefarious PR," based on Facebook's troubles of late—has some cheeky suggestions for the company's new name, including "ZuckVerse," "Nothing Suspicious Going on Here," and the pithy "God." When and if we'll hear remains unclear: Various other outlets reached out to Facebook to confirm the Verge's report, only to receive the same reply: "We don't comment on rumor or speculation." (More Facebook stories.)