Facebook, the company, has changed its name to Meta as a way to remove what employees call its “brand tax” effect on other apps particularly Instagram and including WhatsApp and Messenger.
The rebranding was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg last Thursday, which goes to show he now acknowledges the harm caused by the Facebook brand on their other products.
Two years ago, Zuckerberg dismissed the brand tax issue as not serious enough to merit actions that would require dropping the Facebook brand. Brand tax came around as an aftermath of Facebook’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, in which misinformation and hateful content filled up spaces of the social media platform.
Will the Meta Rebranding Work?
Even with the rebranding of the company as Meta, there is still no guarantee that the brand tax created by Facebook will disappear. Zuckerberg has in fact gone all out in rebranding, renaming even the divisions inside the company itself.
The hardware division formerly known as Facebook Reality Labs, is now plain Reality Labs. The payment division known as Facebook Financial or F2, is now called Novi, which is also the name of Meta’s forthcoming cryptocurrency wallet product.
Meta also took care of the issue last Monday on their earnings report, keeping up hopes that both Facebook and Instagram will eventually turn around. Instagram intends to present more videos through their Reels feature as an attempt to lure a younger group of audience.
