‘Central Intelligence Corporation’: Twitter’s Dorsey dunks on Zuckerberg’s reported rebranding plans

 

21 Oct, 2021 08:01

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©US House handout via Reuters / ©REUTERS/Andreas Gebert 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly wants to rename the site as part of his ambitions to create a virtual reality ‘metaverse’ – and competitors and critics have some suggestions on what it should be called.

The parent company of Facebook, which owns the social media network and other services, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, may soon have a new name. The looming rebranding was reported by The Verge this week. The outlet speculates that the corporation wants to have a name that includes the word ‘Horizon,’ since this is how Facebook’s under-development virtual reality (VR) platform is branded.

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While the Silicon Valley behemoth is yet to confirm the report, yet alone disclose its new name if there indeed is one, there has been no shortage of suggestions hurled their way – including one from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

He responded to a tweet explaining the origin of the word ‘metaverse’ in a science fiction book, saying author Neal Stephenson was right in his prediction that a virtual world owned by private companies would be “a dystopian corporate dictatorship.” He then tweeted: “Central Intelligence Corporation,” apparently suggesting it would be a good name for Zuckerberg’s brainchild.

The ‘metaverse’ has been hyped up by Zuckerberg for several months now. His company even announced its intention to hire over the next five years around 10,000 people in the EU to work on it. What exactly this metaverse would look like is unclear, but presumably it would be a global VR platform.

Dorsey was not the only one to dunk on Facebook over its purported rebranding strategy. Some thought Zuckerberg wouldn’t need to look further than the names of fictional evil corporations among science fiction franchises – or just go for “Evil.corp.”

One person said the tech giant should simply add ‘book’ to all its products, so, for example, Instagram would become “Assbook” in tribute to all the influencers inhabiting it.

Another said Zuckerberg should take his cue from another name-switching celebrity – entertainer Kanye West changed his legal name to ‘Ye’ this month, so why can’t Facebook just become ‘OK’? It could be tricky, however, since there is a Russian social media network that already has that name.

Another person said Facebook could be renamed ‘Meta’ – and while meta.com already exists, it is occupied by a biomedical research website backed by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, so perhaps that wouldn’t be an obstacle.

The Verge report said Facebook would announce the rebranding during the upcoming Connect conference next week or even sooner. So for anyone eager to learn the new name of the scandal-plagued tech giant, they probably won’t have to wait for long.

Meanwhile, negative media reports, government fines, and law enforcement investigations continue to hit Facebook and its founder from all sides. Among the latest bad news is the decision of DC Attorney General Karl Racine to include Zuckerberg as a defendant in a lawsuit over his company’s involvement with the now-defunct election-influencing firm Cambridge Analytica.

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