Following a period of intense scrutiny and damaging whistleblower leaks, news started to emerge on

October 21, 2021, about Facebook's plan to rebrand the company and to change its name.[56][57] In
the Q3 2021 Earnings Call, on October 25, Mark Zuckerberg discussed the ongoing criticism of the
company's social services and the way it operates, and pointed to the pivoting efforts to building
the metaverse – without mentioning the rebranding and the name change.[58] The metaverse vision
and the name change from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms was introduced at Facebook Connect
on October 28, 2021.[59] Based on Facebook's PR campaign, the name change reflects the
company's shifting long term focus of building the metaverse, a digital extension of the physical
world by social media, virtual reality and augmented reality features.[59][60]
"Meta" had been registered as a trademark in the United States in 2018 (after an initial filing in 2015)
for marketing, advertising, and computer services, by a Canadian company that provided big
data analysis of scientific literature.[61] This company was acquired in 2017 by the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative (CZI), a foundation established by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, and became one
of their projects.[62] Following the rebranding announcement, CZI announced that it had already
decided to deprioritize the earlier Meta project, that it would be transferring its rights to the name to
Meta Platforms, and that the project would end in 2022.[63]