Since 2004 when it was founded, Facebook has grown from a campus network app to a formidable behemoth, holding a huge influence on the lives of billions of its users around the world. The social media app, which originally was built to help people stay connected, has grown eventually to become a giant of many faces – but that has come with a mammoth of problems.
Facebook has become a parent to many rival social media companies. It purchased Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp, for $19 billion in 2014. There have been other standalone companies like Oculus and Messenger that have become part of Facebook’s growing conglomerate. While each of them has contributed in making Facebook a multi-billion dollar company it has become, they have as well, added to its problems.
Since the past five years, Facebook has been in the news for many wrong reasons that have not only stirred the anger of a large section of users, but also have attracted antitrust scrutiny from the authorities around the world – and in most cases, heavy penalties followed.
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“Facebook is the world’s foremost social media network, it has extraordinary reach and influence, and it impacts billions of consumers worldwide. It is therefore held to a higher public standard, and opinions, expectations and reactions are so much greater than for other enterprise or consumer companies,” said Kirsten Wolberg, chief technology and operations officer at DocuSign.
For a behemoth with the goldfish status, Facebook has been spotlighted at every corner for moral and technical shortfalls. In 2019 alone, Facebook paid about $6 billion in fines for various antitrust offenses, with the record $5 billion Cambridge Analytica data breach penalty being the highest in its history.
It is 2021, and the story has not changed. It has continued in the same setting and narrative style, with the latest leak of Facebook’s internal research findings by the platform’s former product manager, Frances Haugen, being the latest. Haugen had alleged that Facebook knows about the harm its platforms cause, especially for young people, but chooses profit over public safety.
As the issues around Facebook and its products compound over the years, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been on a wild-goose chase to whitewash his darling company and what it stands for. But as each effort fails, new ideas are developed. So it was not surprising, when in July, Zuckerberg announced the formation of a metaverse product group, as part of an effort to rebrand Facebook and build something brilliantly new and different from what everyone used to know.
Earlier in the week, The Verge reported that Zuckerberg is expected to announce a new name for Facebook. But the identity baptism that is expected to wash all Facebook’s sins clean has prompted some questions about where the solution to the social media’s many problems lies.
In June, US Congress had touted breaking up Facebook as a way to tame the wildling monster that has apparently slipped out of control. But Haugen, in her testimony to Congress, argued that a breakup wouldn’t eliminate the concerns, and instead, she recommended regulation.
“I’m actually against the breaking up of Facebook. Right now Facebook is the internet for lots of the world,” she said.
After 16 years, 90 acquisitions, and billions of dollars – Facebook has become one of the most popular names in the world. While the name over the years has been characterized by ‘misinformation, ‘misuse of private data’, ‘promotion of hate’ antitrust inquiries and heavy fines; branding experts believe that changing it wouldn’t make all that go away.
“Everyone knows what Facebook is,” says Jim Heininger, founder of Rebranding Experts, a firm that focuses solely on rebranding organizations. “The most effective way for Facebook to address the challenges that have tainted its brand recently is through corrective actions, not trying to change its name or installing a new brand architecture.”
Facebook is expected to announce its new name next week, amidst concern of its would-be impact on the vast majority of the platform users, who overtime, have fallen in love with the name. However, the real challenge lies on the other side of the concern – the components that make up the dirt on the name are in the algorithm, powered by decisions made in Facebook offices. Therefore, for many, the name Facebook is not what the US Congress and antitrust regulators around the world are after – and it should be left alone.
“A new name might give the company a facelift. But a name change is not a rebrand,” says Anaezi Modu, the founder and CEO of Rebrand, which advises companies on brand transformations. Branding comes from a company’s mission, culture, and capabilities, more than just its name, logo, or marketing. “Unless Facebook has serious plans to address at least some of its many issues, just changing a name is pointless. In fact, it can worsen matters.” Renaming a company can create more mistrust if it comes off as distancing itself from its reputation, he added.