Facebooks new branding distinguishes app from acquisitions

Facebook wants more people to know it owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus while still maintaining a distinct identity for its main app.

So today Facebook launched a new capitalization and typography format for its company name, using all capital letters and a shifting color scheme that highlights Instagrams purple gradient and WhatsApps green tint.

The Information reported Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was unsatisfied with the credit Facebook was getting for owning Instagram and WhatsApp.

Zuckerberg double-down on that sentiment during this months earnings call as a response to questions about anti-trust investigations against the company that could seek to force a spin off of its acquisitions. Zuckerberg noted that it wa Facebooks resources in areas like anti-spam, internationalization, and ads that helped turn Instagram from a sub-50 million user product to a billion-plus one today.

Beyond rebranding, its working on making Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram Direct a unified interoperable and encrypted messaging system where users can chat across the apps.

Given Facebooks rash of data security, developer platform, election interference, and ongoing privacy scandals, its probably better off if people think they can escape the toxicity by using Instagram.

Now it seems Facebook is happy to burn down some of the credibility of its younger apps if it builds up the central company.

Original article
Author: Josh Constine

TechCrunch is a leading technology media property, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.

Josh Constine has recently written 11 articles on similar topics including :
  1. "Facebook has diverted from its policy of not fact-checking politicians in order to prevent the spread of potentially harmful coronavirus misinformation from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro". (March 31, 2020)
  2. "Facebook may make it easier to escape its ranking algorithm and explore the News Feed in different formats". (February 18, 2020)
  3. "$28 million-funded crypto startup Tagomi will be the newest member of the Libra Association that governs the Facebook-backed Libra stablecoin, TechCrunch has learned. A formal announcement of Tagomi joining was slated for Friday or next week". (February 26, 2020)
  4. "If their post has lots of Likes, you feel jealous. If your post doesn’t get enough Likes, you feel embarrassed. And when you just chase Likes, you distort your life seeking moments that score them, or censor it fearing you won’t look popular without them". (September 26, 2019)
  5. "Its an open secret that every company is on fire, says Kintaba co-founder John Egan. At any given moment something is going horribly wrong in a way that it has never gone wrong before. Code failure downtimes, server outages and hack attacks plague engineering teams". (February 10, 2020)
  6. "Are those red notification dots on your Facebook home screen driving you crazy? Sick of Facebook Marketplace wasting your screen space? Now you can control what appears in the Facebook apps navigation bar thanks to a new option called Shortcuts Bar Settings". (November 11, 2019)
  7. "There’s a strategic cost to the defection of Visa, Stripe, eBay, and more from the Facebook-led cryptocurrency Libra Association. They’re not just names dropping off a list. Each potentially made Libra more useful, ubiquitous, or reputable". (October 13, 2019)
  8. "Its suspiciously convenient that Facebook already fulfills most of the regulatory requirements its asking governments to lay on the rest of the tech industry". (February 17, 2020)
  9. "Are we really doing this again? After the pivot to video. After Instant Articles. After news was deleted from the News Feed. Once more, Facebook dangles extra traffic, and journalism outlets leap through its hoop and into its cage. Tomorrow, Facebook will unveil its News tab". (October 25, 2019)
  10. "After eBay, Visa, Stripe, and other high-profile partners ditched the Facebook -backed cryptocurrency collective, Libra scored a win today with the addition of Shopify". (February 21, 2020)
  11. "Facebook is suffering from a massive bug in its News Feed spam filter, causing URLs to legitimate websites including Medium, Buzzfeed, and USA Today to be blocked from being shared as posts or comments". (March 18, 2020)
Posted on  , , ,