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Worth nearly $1trn, Facebook is the world’s sixth-most-valuable company. Its revenues have grown by 56% in the past year, and its share price by more than a quarter. Nearly 3bn people use its products every month. Why did such a successful company change its name as Meta?

The likely official reason for the rebranding is that the firm has outgrown the social network that Mark Zuckerberg started 17 years ago in a Harvard dorm. Today it includes other social apps (Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) and video hardware (Oculus, Portal). It has launched a digital wallet (Novi) and may yet offer a currency (Diem). Mr Zuckerberg expects people eventually to associate his firm more with the “metaverse”(元字宙), a virtual space for work, play and more, than with social media.

Facebook wouldn’t be the first tech giant to do so. In 2015 Google set up Alphabet, a holding company for the search engine and its many side projects. Under this model, Facebook would become just another app within a wider family, though by far it has been the biggest earner.

There is another possible motive for a makeover. For all its financial success, the Facebook brand has become tarnished. The social network is blamed for fueling everything from teenage anorexia(厌食症) to uprising at the US Capitol. Public trust in it is lower than in most tech giants, and falling. Although two years ago the firm started branding its apps as being “from Facebook”, its new smart glasses, which can record video and take phone calls, feature only the logo of its partner, Ray-Ban. A former employee revealed that Facebook was trying to cover up a drop in young American users.

Mr Zuckerberg himself has been a reason for much of the criticism of Facebook, and of bossy tech firms more generally. As the all-powerful founder, he has a higher profile than his opposite numbers at TikTok, YouTube and other social networks. Normally, a brand facing a reputational crisis might dump its unpopular CEO. But Mr Zuckerberg’s position is immovable, which may explain why he would want to dump the brand instead.