Facebook changes company name to Meta

Details:

• Facebook said the change of name attempts to underscore the firm’s goal to be known for more than just social media. However, the names of the company’s apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will not change.
• The group will divide its financial reporting into two segments: the social media apps business and a “Facebook Reality Labs” business, which will focus on metaverse-related operations.

Dive deeper:

• Facebook has had a rough month after a whistleblower turned over documents to the Wall Street Journal in an exposé that revealed that the social media company puts “astronomical profits” before people. The firm also faced an outage earlier in October that took down all its apps including WhatsApp and Instagram temporarily.
• This isn’t the first time a large tech business has changed its name: In 2015, Google reorganized itself under parent firm Alphabet to signal that it was more than just a search engine.