Facebook is rebranding its corporate name to Meta, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks to a future of social experiences, with plans to build inside the alternative cyberscape known as the “metaverse.”

“Starting today our company is now Meta,” Zuckerberg said at Connect, the VR developer conference, unveiling the widely anticipated new name. Critics have said the rebrand is a way to distance itself from the tarnished legacy of Facebook as a social network. Zuckerberg said during the announcement that Facebook “is an iconic social media brand but increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything we do.”

Zuckerberg opened Connect by explaining why the company is discussing a theoretical virtual world that it hopes to build within the next 10 years, instead of real problems weighing on the current business. There are some people who would say, “this is not a time to focus on the future, there are important issues to focus on in the present,” Zuckerberg said during the presentation on Thursday. Yet, Zuckerberg was defiant, dismissing those critics who would have Facebook remain stagnant. “We live for what we build,” Zuckerberg said. “As long as I’m running this company, I will do my best to celebrate this spirit and absolutely go for it.”

But while Zuckerberg was showing off “social experiences” in Web 3.0, a concept defined by non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrency, blockchain, decentralized platforms, and virtual goods, noticeably absent was the reigning monarch of social media: Facebook itself. Facebook is instead leaning on new products like Horizon Worlds, Home and Workrooms, which are game-like platforms accessible through virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses. There was also talk of holograms. Zuckerberg imagines the real world will blend seamlessly with the virtual through lifelike holograms that can teleport anywhere. “Imagine your best friend is at a concert somewhere across the world,” Zuckerberg said, while speaking alongside a projection of a live Jon Batiste performance. “What if you could be there with her.”

Zuckerberg further outlined the future of the company in the “metaverse,” which depends on connecting people even more closely online.

But as Facebook charts this course into the meta-space, it is trying to distance what comes next from its current chaos.

“There are two objectives in the rebrand, one is to realign the company to this metaverse idea,” said Chris Ross, a Gartner analyst, specializing in brands, innovation and strategy. “And it’s to reposition the company overall.”

Here’s exactly how Facebook reframed its corporate identity: “It’s the next chapter for our company,” Zuckerberg said. “Today, we are seen as a social media company. The metaverse is the next frontier.”

Facebook emphasized products evolving outside the social network, Instagram and WhatsApp, which constitute its “family of apps.” Those apps have a role to play in connecting people to the metaverse, but they aren’t the focus of its designs. Earlier this week, Facebook spun Facebook Reality Labs into its own division, comprised of devices like Oculus, Project Aria AR glasses, and software platforms like Horizon Worlds. Facebook is walling off its experimental unit similar to how Google created Alphabet, which became the corporate umbrella over Google’s main business and its “other bets.” Google’s “other bets” are concepts like self-driving cars and drones.

Read more: Facebook's rebrand is not something to celebrate, advertisers say

Changes to the corporate structure like this allow a company to separate its profitable legacy business from the financial drain of its futuristic gambles. For Facebook, it’s also a way to create a future that’s not anchored by the old social network, which has garnered a reputation as being mostly for older people and doesn’t have the same cache among the young people who will one day populate the metaverse.

Facebook under fire

Facebook’s cosmetic update comes as the company fends off an unrelenting onslaught of critics, like whistleblower and ex-employee Frances Haugen, media, lawmakers, regulators, civil rights groups and digital watchdogs. Facebook has earned a reputation, fairly or not, for mucking up the internet with its social media platforms. More than any of its rivals like, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and others, Facebook has been blamed for exacerbating social divisions.

Haugen’s recent leaks of internal docs blamed Facebook for allowing its algorithm to amplify the least credible information when it comes to politics or COVID-19, because it was good for engagement. Twitter, YouTube and others have faced similar complaints about pushing passive users into extremist content loops, but Facebook has been the focus of most complaints about the harms of social media.

Facebook is too large not to draw fire: It generated $28.3 billion in ad revenue in the third quarter and ended the quarter with 3.6 billion people monthly on its apps, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Now, Facebook wants a new image to project into the metaverse. “They can’t pull Facebook into the metaverse,” said one ad agency CEO speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is really valuable but it’s also really sick.”

Name changes aren't new

There are still many outstanding questions, however, about whether Facebook can even make this transition to Meta successfully. The tech world is littered with examples of companies that have tried to make major structural and name changes, and then faded away.

Just look at Myspace, the company that Facebook outcompeted into oblivion. Once the pre-eminent social network, it was later sold to News Corp., and then tried to rebrand as a social music site, before being bought by Time Inc. in 2016. It has barely been heard from again.

Another tragic tech brand, Yahoo, has been through the rebrand ringer, sold to Verizon in 2017, which turned it into Oath, which was a combination of AOL and Yahoo. In 2018, Oath became Verizon Media Group, which was sold to Apollo Fund this year.

“Yahoo lost so much credibility,” a top digital media holdings executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They had a really powerful name in Yahoo and now they lost it. They just kind of walked away from it.”

Of course, Facebook is nowhere near the distressed levels that Yahoo and Myspace reached. Facebook made almost $85 billion in 2020 in ad revenue. Facebook has more than 10 million advertisers, most of which are small- and medium-sized businesses that depend on its powerful self-serve ad platform to reach the consumers in their neighborhoods. It’s still a vibrant business, with almost no alternative except Google to rival it.

However, another media holdings executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Facebook’s reliance on small businesses for most of its revenue could also hurt its chances in the metaverse. Facebook is basically the yellow pages, this exec said, a repository for small businesses to list their hours of operation.

“There is this funny parallel meta-world evolving, that’s the avant-garde and Facebook is the mainstream,” the media holdings exec said. “So it’s a big risk saying all of sudden you are going to live in a virtualized world of your own creation and take everyone with you.”

There are more risks to this plan, as well. There is no telling whether Facebook can create new social experiences in the metaverse that won’t have the same troubles following it, said Ellysse Dick, policy analyst on AR/VR issues at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“The metaverse, or whatever we end up calling this next phase of digital connection, isn’t going to be immune to the challenges that Facebook and other internet companies have had to tackle on the 2D web,” Dick said. “In fact, the metaverse will feel much closer to ‘real-world’ experiences, which means that online harassment and abuse could be exacerbated in these more immersive spaces.”

Facebook does have the benefit of hindsight, though, Dick said. “This time around, they have a better sense of what the harms could be, who to reach out to for input, and the tools they might be able to use to mitigate potential negative impacts,” Dick said.