The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.
Global users are experiencing outages on Facebook, including all social networks the company owns, which include Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. When navigating to these websites, a server error will appear — Instagram shows a “5xx server error,” which indicates that this is an issue with Facebook’s servers. Users are also unable to send messages or load new content on the mobile apps for these platforms. Even Oculus, Facebook’s virtual reality platform, and Workplace, its business communication tool, are down.