Domain Observer Domain Observer
A little over a week ago, I read that Facebook was planning to rebrand in a fashion similar to the Google / Alphabet rebrand. The idea behind the rebrand was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to plan to turn the company into a metaverse-focused business. The news, as I understand, was first reported by The Verge.
Soon after the article was published in The Verge, speculation began to mount about what Facebook – or perhaps a parent entity would be called. Because a Mark Zuckerberg related entity owned Meta.com already, it would be pretty easy for Facebook to rebrand as Meta. At the time of publication, Meta.com was forwarding to Meta.org, the website for a project called Meta from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
At today’s Facebook Connect 2021 event livestream, Zuckerberg announced the corporate rebrand, and the name chosen was, in fact, Meta. At some point today, Meta.com stopped forwarding to Meta.org, and the domain name now forwards to a page within the Facebook.com website sharing what Facebooks expects to come with its metaverse project.
Because Meta.com is registered under Whois privacy at GoDaddy, it is not possible to see the registrant of the domain name. It is also impossible to see if the domain name changed hands to reflect an ownership change. Regardless of any ownership changes, owning Meta.com made the brand transition much easier. I would imagine that is a mid-eight figure domain name at the moment.
