WhatsApp will start reflecting a change for Facebook's rebranding to Meta: report

The popular social media company Facebook has recently changed its name to Meta, announcing its commitment to developing the metaverse. In the process, Meta will create an ecosystem of devices that can communicate with each other and facilitate a virtual, interactive environment for the user. As the company rebrands itself, other platforms owned by Facebook will continue to function as they were initially. 

However, since Facebook used to add brand elements in the user interface of owned applications, Meta is likely to do the same in near future, and reports about the same have surfaced online. Readers might remember seeing a small Facebook brand element at the bottom of the screen while opening WhatsApp. This app-themed logo also appears while opening Instagram. According to a recent report, the Facebook logo and brand element will now be replaced by Meta's logo, reinforcing Meta's ownership of the platforms. 

WhatsApp changes footer to reflect the parent company, Meta

According to a recent report by WABetaInfo, the footer in WhatsApp's application will now change from "WhatsApp from Facebook" to "from Meta" accompanied by the company's logo that resembles that sign of infinity. The change was spotted in WhatsApp's latest Android beta update on October 30, 2021. The footer was initially added to make people understand that WhatsApp is a product of Facebook, but as the rebranding has already taken place, all of Facebook's products are now operating under Meta.

The change is yet to be released for all the two billion users and corresponding devices that run WhatsApp. In our testing, we were still able to see the old footer on the latest WhatsApp version available to regular users. The same is visible on Instagram. It is clear that Meta will make the branding changes in order to reflect upon the rebranding. Users can expect to see more changes in the coming time. 

Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp at Meta informed about the in-app updates that will reflect upon the parent companies new name. In a tweet dated October 29, 2021, he mentioned the changes that will be made. For those who are confused about the naming and conventions, the social media and communication products such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook (the application) will remain to function as they did, but instead of reporting to Facebook Inc., they will now report to Meta. 

(Image: WABetaInfo)