PHNOM PENH: As we reported on Thursday, the world’s biggest social media app company is set to change its name. Facebook will make an announcement on Thursday next week. It could well mean that Cambodia’s favourite app will be changing its name as well. EAC News hit the streets to find out what people thought about the big change.
No one knows yet what new name Mark Zuckerberg will give to his Facebook empire. Back when Facebook was created in 2004, the world hadn’t yet experienced such vast connectivity for the general public in what became a new way of doing politics, socializing and advertising, but the pioneer has now become the target of regulators and lawmakers over its questionable business practices. What we do know is that Zuckerberg is busy planning to rebrand his company in what he’s calling a “metaverse” that will include his other social media giants, WhatsApp and Instagram.
EAC News went along to the Department of Media and Communication at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, to ask students for their thoughts on Facebook’s name change:
“For me, personally, I think they want to upgrade for the new era, same to the other generation. So when it comes the next generation they want to upgrade to something new”.
“Facebook has many applications in Facebook itself like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger so Facebook alone can’t stand alone right now and they want to bring other applications to the same level as well. So, in order to do, Facebook might be changing names that brings all of this together, to be under one rooftop”.
“I think Facebook tries to find something new, something more modern or higher innovative like many other apps to compete with the apps as well. And we have seen there was several crashes suddenly on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger so I think it’s time for Facebook to recycle and should change its name as well as some programs and some interfaces”.
We also asked the students what Facebook should be changing its name to:
“For me, they maybe will go with “MetaBook” because MetaBook is something new, related to something new. Meta means something like renovation so I think this one is perfect for the new one.
“For my perspective, I think it should be, “Face” should remain the same. So, it should be “FaceNet”, because like WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook still have selfies or photos uploading in the story, so Face still remain the same. And the new one is net, so the new name should be “FaceNet”.
“Socnet, like s-o-c-n-e-t, so maybe combine with social and network. Social to interact the same as before and network to upgrading, like, we know we already have 5G, maybe we will have 6G or 7G in the future as well, so Facebook will might upgrade it like this.”
The new name is expected to be announced in Silicon Valley on Thursday 28 October.
