蜜芽传媒

The social media giant Facebook is rebranding its holding company from Facebook to Meta.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name as he unveiled plans to build a "metaverse" - an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.

He said the existing brand could not "possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future", and needed to change.

But why now and what difference will it make? Elizabeth Dwoskin, Silicon Valley Correspondent for the Washington Post in San Francisco, told Newsday that it's part of a major damage limitation exercise following recent allegations by a whistle-blower, denting the company's reputation.

鈥淲hat has ultimately come about is a full-blown crisis for the company because we鈥檙e really seeing the extent of what they knew about the harm that they caused and in the midst of this crisis they decided to do a re-branding.鈥�

鈥淚n the short term very little is going to change. What they would like to be known as is a hardware company. Facebook 鈥� now Meta 鈥� always plays the long game."

(Pic: A smartphone with Meta logo on it in front of Facebook logo display; Credit: Reuters)

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