Facebook now rebrands itself as Meta. The tech giant tries to go from being a scandal-ridden social network to its virtual reality vision for the future.
Instagram was earlier called Burbn as named by founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The app, in general, saw failure due to its features and lack of modern ideology, allowing founders to shake things a little, including the brand name.
Earlier PayPal was called ‘Confinity’ and was finally renamed after a merger with Elon Musk’s venture called X.com.
In 2010, a food directory website called ‘Foodiebay’ was launched. Two years later, it was renamed ‘Zomato’ and it is now the top runner among the food tech unicorns.
Google was earlier called ‘BackRub’ during its earliest days in 1996. It was rebranded as Google in 1998 after founders realized that it wasn’t going well with the crowd. In 2015, Google rebranded itself as Alphabet in a corporate reconfiguration.
Twitter wasn’t a microblogging website and app during its first run, in fact, it was a podcast platform called ‘Odeo’. Later it was changed into a ‘tweet’ platform after Apple iTunes took over the podcast industry.
Amazon was earlier called Relentless. Relentless was a simple online bookstore launched by Jeff Bezos in 1996, now Amazon dominates over its competitors worldwide.
Urban Clap at the beginning of 2020, decided to go global and rebranded itself as Urban Company.
Earlier Yahoo was called ‘Jerry’s guide to the World Wide Web' as the first search engine and a direct competitor to Google. Due to the long name and lack of enthusiasm in it, it was shortened to ‘Yahoo!’
Tinder entered Indian markets in 2016 and faced tough competition from apps like Bumble. Due to its digital dating features, it was earlier called ‘MatchBox’.