Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social media giant will change the name of its holding company to Meta, in a rebrand that comes as the company faces a series of public relations crises.

Zuckerberg revealed the new name at Facebook’s annual AR/VR conference on Thursday, where he outlined the company’s virtual-reality vision for the future.

The billionaire said sorry after an internal technical issue took Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram offline at about 16:00 GMT on Monday.

The scramble to bring it back online eventually succeeded at around 22:00.

But it is likely to increase scrutiny of the social media giant's reach.

For hours, potentially billions of people found themselves without the social media tools they relied upon to keep in touch with friends and family. Others reportedly found they could not access services which required a Facebook login.

"When you're building something like Facebook which is unprecedented in the world," he said on Wednesday, "there are things that you're going to mess up.

"What I think people should hold us accountable for is if we are learning from our mistakes."

As well as being Facebook's chief executive, Mr Zuckerberg is chairman of the company's board. When asked if his position had been discussed, he replied: "Not that I know of!"

The mere possibility that his leadership is in question is a scenario few would have predicted even a month ago.

"Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr," said Mark Zuckerberg near the start of Facebook's annual F8 developers conference.

His social network had been criticised over the amount of time it had taken to take the clip offline.

About an hour before the event got underway, police had revealed that the murder suspect had killed himself.

Steve Stephens had been the subject of a national manhunt.

He justified his decision of not including a dislike button by saying that it can fuel hatred on social media. But, it looks like the Facebook users are going to get the much-awaited dislike button. Well, sort of.

Instead of rolling out the feature for posts in your News Feed, the company is teasing the feature in Facebook Messenger, as reported by TechCrunch.

Now he's focusing on how to stop the world from breaking apart.

In a nearly 6,000 word manifesto published Thursday, Zuckerberg writes candidly about how Facebook's mission for "building a global community" is contrary to the current political trend toward nationalism in the U.S. and abroad.

The billionaire tech mogul had filed a legal case seeking to acquire small pockets of land within his large estate on the island of Kauai.

But his use of the so-called "quiet title" legal system led to criticism from other residents.

He said he had not taken the time to fully understand the process. "It's clear we made a mistake," he said.

Mr Zuckerberg bought a 700-acre estate on the Hawaiian island, where he says his family wish to "put down roots".

However, the estate is littered with a number of small parcels of land called kuleana.

The Facebook (FB, Tech30) CEO and cofounder expressed concern on Friday over Trump's executive orders this week on immigration and refugees.

When asked by Buzzfeed News, he said: "No, I'm focused on building our community at Facebook and working on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative."

Speculation that Mr Zuckerberg might run for president was fuelled when he made political comments and announced a tour of US states.

The 32-year-old would be old enough to stand for president in 2020.

A day’s worth of questioning in the Dallas courtroom yielded few surprises, other than confirmation that Facebook’s deal to buy VR company Oculus was even more expensive than first publicised.

As well as the $2bn (£1.6bn) fee announced back in 2014, another $1bn was paid out in order to keep key staff on the Oculus team and to provide incentives.

The 32-year-old, who has also used his time in Dallas to visit community groups, appeared to have little patience for the claims made by Zenimax, the company that alleges its software was stolen in order to make Oculus a success.