Facebook is Going to Change Its Brand Name and It may mean a lot for the Company

Soon Facebook is going to join the club of a few companies that resort to changing their names as a so-called rebranding strategy.

By Moshiur RahmanPublished 3 years ago • 4 min read

Probably this can not be seen in near future

Facebook: the Giant Tech Company on the Planet

Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and some of his fellows from Harvard University, Facebook becomes a technological cash cow by the end of 2020, with a net worth of around US$159.32 billion in which US$29.15 billion was the net income for the year only. Although the company initially starts as a picture-sharing platform with the requirement of having a valid email address and being aged at least 13 or older, the company becomes much more than just a social networking site in a decade. Having almost 3 billion users across the globe, it is the single greatest network in the history of humankind as well. But with the course of time since its beginning, the company deviates from its standard with an increasing number of accusations like a huge number of invalid users, manipulation of user's sensitive data and most notorious among all is the US election engineering in 2016 associated with British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook's Initial Pledges and Its Deviations

The overwhelming so-called virtual connectivity fails, resulting in various types of problems for many

Facebook was primarily used for sharing pictures among users. Later it emerges as a vast virtual social networking platform where people can communicate and exchange any kind of message instantly. It allows a huge number of people to gather virtually irrespective of any place from across the globe. Users can also share their emotions symbolized through a number of emojis. Everybody was happy at the beginning, thinking that the world has been able to find a way to get people connected. As time passes, it has proved wrong. In spite of being connected, people start to become isolated and dependent on digital devices where they tend to spend most of their leisure time, forgetting in-person communications with family and friends. The situation gets so worst that a number of social groups begin to raise their voice. Lots of social researches suggest that too much facebooking is the prime cause of anxiety, depression and loneliness among the young especially the ones whose age ranges from 18 to 38. Users' craving for attaining dopamine from the virtual interaction evidently becomes temporary, resulting in serious frustrations.

Facebook–Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal

British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica in the 2010s for the purpose of political advertising collected data belonging to millions of Facebook users. The private data collection was conducted by using an application called "This Is Your Digital Life" developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research in 2013. The app is reported to intrude and harvest data up to almost 88 million active facebook users and that later are used for the US political campaign in the 2016 US presidential election in which The Republicans win and Donald Trump is sworn as the President. This gut ranging and hair raising incident in the history of the United States, the country which is known as the birthplace of modern democracy and beholds the praiseworthy legacy of all political processes, comes to light in 2018 when an employee of the Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie, discloses the whole incident to The Guardian and The Newyork Times. Consequently, Facebook apologized for its role in users' private data manipulation and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress. In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Facebook will be fined $5 billion for its privacy violations. In October 2019, Facebook paid a penalty of £500,000 fine to the UK Information Commissioner's Office. In May 2018, Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy and closed forever. Still, the memory of this scandal is vivid to the world and it is also tough for Facebook to forget this either.

Frances Haugen, a whistleblower and a former product manager at Facebook, has reported recently that the company is quite reluctant and has been unsuccessful to take meaningful action to prevent the platform from being used to spread hate and misinformation. Facebook's leaders are constantly being blamed for prioritizing profit over health, and the situation is so bad that lawmakers are comparing the company to big tobacco.

Under these circumstances, it is quite expected that the flagship social networking platform is planning to do something at least to recover its past glory. The name-changing initiative is no doubt a part of that. Moreover, The company owns Instagram and Whatsapp. It is also an effort to bring the three companies under the same umbrella in order to increase the convenience to the users and reduce the operational costs.

The platform is working hard to give more living experiences to its users like feeling the activity of walking while participating in a meeting. It is now confined to the feeling of sitting while talking to each other in a group chat. Last week, the company has declared to employ at least 10000 people in its Europe office to expedite the new operations.

Giant Company name change is not something new although the examples are a few in the history and almost all the incidents suggest to regain the past glory or get rid of past scandals. For example, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro, changed its old name and rebranded as Altria, following multiple scandals and controversies. The ValuJet was compelled to take a new name after a tragic accident had occurred in 1996. Expectedly, Facebook will certainly strive to change for the better in the future as well.