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Comment by IncreasePosts | Hacker News Reader

It makes sense to rebrand anyway, because I'm sure they don't want people to only think of "that social media site" for all of their other ventures. Just like Google rebranding as alphabet

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IDK, I still call Google "Google". I even hear employees refer to the entity as "Google". The Meta rebranding seems different.

I think for Google the more meaningful other brands are the actual product ones, like Waymo, Nest, YouTube, Calico, Verily. Those are the ones that benefit from being able to distance themselves a bit from being "a Google company" and all the baggage that comes with that, eg an assumption that it'll be shuttered at some point, will pivot massively into ads, whatever.

I don't think Meta has nearly that need. It's "other companies" are Instagram and Whatsapp, which are basically in the exact same space as Facebook.

I don't think Google really "rebranded" in the same kind of way, since Google is still their brand across the vast majority of their product offerings and the signs on Google offices still say Google. Seems like the Alphabet thing is more about letting the "other bets" be under a higher umbrella, and possibly other reasons related to financial engineering etc.

The rebrand came at a time when "Facebook" was mainly associated with either tremendous scandal (Facebook Files, ad fraud, Cambridge Analytica, Rohingya and Tigray genocides, etc.) or a social media platform increasingly dominated by the elderly.

I think it was a desperate lunge away from that toxic brand toward ANYTHING else. Zuckerberg put his money on VR, given the pandemic and the mild success of Oculus.

Betting big on the metaverse in particular was a mistake, but it might have helped keep the Facebook stink off of products like WhatsApp and Instagram, which remain pretty popular among mainstream audiences.

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