New logo? Call itself ‘FCBK’? Bring back poking? How Facebook could rebrand
Facebook’s proposed rebrand comes at a crucial time for the company. On one hand, Mark Zuckerberg’s increasing focus on the “metaverse” seems to hint that he has ambitions far beyond simply destroying every non-Facebook industry on the planet. But at the same time, he also has to unveil this new unstoppable machine of death without scaring off too many regular Facebook users. How will he be able to manage such an impossible highwire act? Here are some suggestions.
A big part of Facebook’s rebrand will apparently be the announcement of a new umbrella name, much like when Google debuted “Alphabet” to show that it had moved away from the business model of helping sad middle-aged men stalk their college girlfriends at 2am. “Horizon” has been touted as Facebook’s new umbrella name, but in my estimation this is both too bland and too far removed from the company’s origins. Instead, let’s just ditch all the vowels and call it FCBK. Yes, it would be using the sort of textspeak that has been extinct for a decade and a half and, yes, at first glance it does look like there’s a new company called “Fuckbook”. But this is Facebook, remember. What were you expecting – competence?
Right now, Facebook is exclusively used by very old people who only use the site for two things: inadvertently radicalising themselves towards a populist rightwing hellstate, and posting decade-old cat memes. That would be fine, but these people are dying at a rate of knots, and Facebook needs new users to replace them. The fastest way to do this would be to update its logo. Facebook has always been very conservative in this regard, never deviating from its simple blue and white aesthetic. But you know what kids like? That’s right, graffiti. And rock music. And surfboards, and the Biker Mice from Mars. Let’s get a brand new logo that looks like it was scrawled on the window of a shop by a punk. The kids will come flooding back. Cowabunga!
