What Facebook’s Meta rebranding does (and doesn’t) mean for domain investors

The rebranding will add fuel to the metaverse fire, but don’t expect Facebook itself to buy all of the domains.

Yesterday, Facebook announced it is rebranding as Meta. Domain investors had speculated this could be the company’s new name ever since rumors began circulating that the company was changing its name.

Now that it’s official let’s talk about what this does and does not mean for domain name investors.

First, this is another vote of confidence (or at least addition to the hype) of the metaverse. Domain investors have been snapping up metaverse-related domains in droves lately as aftermarket sales took off. Some recent aftermarket sales with the word meta include:

Metaverse.io $175,000
Meta.so $149,000
Meta.io $10,000
Metaxr.com $60,000
MetaPayments.co $53,450
MetaAvatars.net $44,000
MetaDating.net $35,000

Some meta domain sales with high price tags occurred just weeks after the sellers registered the domains, spurring even more investors to jump in on the action. Everyone loves the prospect of easy and quick money.

Facebook’s Meta’s announcement will definitely spur more interest in metaverse-related domain names.

Now, for what the rebranding doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that Meta will necessarily be a big buyer of metaverse-related domains. In many ways, this is similar to Google’s rebranding to Alphabet. The company went with abc.xyz for its corporate domain, but hardly anyone visits that website. The company didn’t acquire every domain with Alphabet and its products in them. Sure, it registered some domains, including ones with the letters of the alphabet. But the point is Alphabet is a corporate name while Google, YouTube, et al. remain its brand names.

Facebook will remain Facebook. Instagram, WhatsApp, et al. aren’t changing brands.

Meta will certainly register some domains. It owns meta.com, which it forwards to a page on facebook.com. (It got this domain when the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative adopted a scientific research project by the same name.) It has likely purchased others. But it can’t buy everything because Meta isn’t a brand it can protect. It’s a broad term used by many companies and people doing the exact thing Meta has adopted the name for.

The rebranding is good news for owners of metaverse-related domains. No doubt, domain investors will buy lots of domains with meta in them. Hopefully, they will have more success than when they bought all of those 3D domains last decade.