Facebook rebrands as Facebook

Facebook is worried people might get confused between the service and the company because they’ve both got the same name.

The solution to this, apparently devised by Chief Marketing Officer Antonio Lucio, is to capitalise the name when referring to the company, as opposed to the service. “The new branding was designed for clarity, and uses custom typography and capitalization to create visual distinction between the company and app,” wrote Lucio.

The sudden need to make this distinction seems to come from a desire to appear transparent about the growing Facebook empire. Some US politicians have expressed regret that Facebook was allowed to buy WhatsApp and Instagram, resulting in it controlling a large proportion of the instant messaging and social media markets. Further attempts at expansion, such as the Libra cryptocurrency project, have further stoked those concerns.

So now other Facebook-owned services will feature the news capitalised logo more prominently, so people don’t get all confused. “This brand change is a way to better communicate our ownership structure to the people and businesses who use our services to connect, share, build community and grow their audiences,” explained Lucio.

Branding is an arcane business at the best of times. Companies seek to imbue letters and shapes with all sorts of spurious characteristics and connotations, but hardly anyone else cares. We won’t be capitalising Facebook when we write about it because that’s just silly. But if it’s really important for them that we do, we suggest that come up with a plausible eight-word acronym and we’ll think about it.