A big headline in the news lately has been Facebook switching to Meta. This new name is indicative of what founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg states is the company’s core ambition: to build the metaverse.1 A new brand, distanced from Facebook, ran under the same company.
What does a transition from Facebook to Meta really mean?
Essentially Facebook is trying to change its brand as we know it, from a social networking platform to a leading network for virtual and augmented reality. An all-encompassing “virtual universe” so to speak. Users will roam freely as avatars, attending virtual business meetings, shopping in virtual stores, and socializing at virtual get-togethers.
This isn’t the first time a major tech company has changed its name. In 2015, Google attempted an overhaul of its company structure, creating a parent company known as Alphabet. 2
While this generated a lot of buzz at the time, most people still call anything having to do with the company or its subsidiaries “Google,” with seemingly no pushback from the company itself. After almost two decades of building its brand to get to where they are today in total users, Facebook can probably expect the same treatment.
Google quietly remains a subsidiary of Alphabet today, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is a tech giant with a $1.4 trillion market cap, making it the 5th most valuable company by market cap in the world. 2
How will Facebook’s transition to Meta affect your Audiology and Hearing Care Business? It won’t. At least not for a while.
