[canniballectern]

I bet this will be generally effective at shielding their other properties from bad news about Facebook.

For ordinary people, "WhatsApp is owned by Meta" is going to feel really different from "WhatsApp is owned by Facebook".

[rexreed]

Will this work, or will this just be like Google's Alphabet, which the general person-on-the-street doesn't know or care about?

[stetrain]

Having people on the street not know or care about who owns WhatsApp and Instagram seems like it might be the point.

[buitreVirtual]

Depends on what we mean by "work". My impression is that Google didn't change its name due to shame or for consumer branding, but rather to better reflect the company's structure where not everything is Google anymore. In the case of FB, the change could be in part due to bad reputation and in part consumer oriented.

[dfabulich]

The reason the person-on-the-street doesn't care about Alphabet is that people don't interact with any Alphabet company except Google. Waymo? Calico? Loon? Wing? Hardly any ordinary people think about those. (Maybe some day, but not today.)

By contrast, lots of ordinary people interact with WhatsApp and Instagram. It will be/feel different when they're "owned by Meta" vs. "owned by Facebook."

[amurthy1]

My understanding was Google's rebranding was mainly targeted at investors so that when financials were reported, it would be split out between Google vs. other divisions. It would make sense that most everyday people wouldn't know about this.

FB's rebrand seems targeted to everyday consumers, so I would bet their brand strategy would change to cater to that, in a way that Google/Alphabet never cared to.

[catlikesshrimp]

My mother doesn't associate facebook to whatsapp, although I have explained several times.

The day facebook went down for some hours, she woke me up complaining "the internet was down"

[chaostheory]

Meta is a real word that's still actively being used. imo this will make it harder to find bad news about the company in the future.

[jacquesm]

That might not be entirely coincidental.

[baby]

Like “apple”?

[zamadatix]

Maybe but I'd be surprised. How many (both tech folks or news articles) really associate Fitbit/Waymo/DeepMind primarily with Alphabet instead of Google? Even clicking a recent story which refers to it as an Alphabet subsidy they reference it as "DeepMind, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet,".

[ootsootsoots]

Worked for Xfinity

[elliekelly]

This might be the nicest thing I’ve ever said about Comcast but I think their slow roll-out approach was better (from a PR perspective) than what facebook is doing. There was no big bandaid pull where Comcast was suddenly Xfinity it just sort of... happened?

[tailspin2019]

Sadly, I think you’re right, given a long enough time frame.

It’s probably a smart move on Facebook’s part. Doesn’t stop them being terrible though.

[pjerem]

> Doesn’t stop them being terrible though.

Well, it depends on if they want to keep the Meta name clean from scandals. But I doubt they manage too. It’s a company DNA issue at this point.