(CNBC) In October 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent his trillion-dollar social media company into a new direction. Facebook changed its name to Meta and Zuckerberg set his sights on a new horizon, the metaverse. “There was genuinely a need and a desire at the time for Facebook, the company, to rebrand into something else,” said Leo Gebbie, principal analyst and director at CCS Insight.