Facebook changes its logo to show it owns WhatsApp, Instagram
What's the story
In a major move, Facebook has changed its corporate branding to better reflect the products that are owned by the company. The social media giant, which owns the main Facebook app, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram (among other services), has revealed a more generic logo, which it says will appear with different color tones. Here's all you need to know about it.
Confusion
Problem to distinguish between Facebook app and company
While Facebook started off as a company offering social networking services, it brought several more products under its umbrella over the years, including messaging service WhatsApp and photo-sharing platform Instagram. Now, the thing is, they all remain under Facebook, the corporate parent, but the word 'Facebook' just reflects the main Facebook app and website, not these other products.
Solution
This is where the new, generic logo comes in
To tackle this problem, Facebook has introduced a new, more generic logo that still reads 'Facebook' but comes with a varying set of color tones, each representing a different brand. Specifically, along with the regular 'blue' which is synonymous with the Facebook app, it also uses a green and pinkish shade to represent WhatsApp and Instagram, respectively.
Quote
Here's what Facebook CMO Antonio Lucio said while announcing the logo
"We're updating our company branding to be clearer about the products that come from Facebook. We're introducing a new company logo and further distinguishing the Facebook company from the Facebook app, which will keep its own branding."
Roll out
Soon, it will start appearing in WhatsApp, Instagram
The new logo will start appearing in Facebook's products and marketing materials in the coming weeks. So, you'd be able to see the green logo while logging in on WhatsApp, while the pink one would appear on Instagram. Ultimately, the company hopes, this will keep users informed that the products they are using are actually built and served by Facebook.