Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told company employees that they will now be referred to as "Meta mates", after the company changed its name from Facebook to Meta last year.
According to a Bloomberg report, Zuckerberg announced the change in a virtual meeting with employees last Tuesday, and later mentioned the term in a Facebook post.
"Meta, Metamates, and Me are about being good stewards of our company and our mission, it's about feeling responsible for our collective success and for each other as team members, and it's about looking after our company and each other," Zuckerberg wrote.
Meta CEO Andrew Bosworth - who is set to become the company's chief technology officer (CTO) this year - told The Verge reporter Alex Heath that the term "Meta-Mates" was coined by scientist Douglas Hofstadter, "after An employee emailed him for ideas after rebranding.”
- "be open" is becoming "live in the future"
- "be direct and respect your colleagues" is a change to "be open"
- Zuck says employees are not supposed to "nice ourselves to death"
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) February 15, 2022
In his virtual meeting with employees on Tuesday, Zuckerberg also revealed that the Facebook logo "Move Fast" will become "Move Fast Together", while "Be Bold" will become "Build AWESOME Things." Build Awesome Things) and Be Open will become Live In The Future.
Facebook's News Feed will be rebranded as Feed, with a company spokesperson telling MarketWatch that the change "will better reflect the diverse content people see in their feeds."
Meta employees expressed their own concerns about their new nickname, and expressed these fears with sarcasm on Twitter, and New York Times correspondent Shera Frankel said that one of the employees wrote on his account, "Does this mean we are in a sinking ship?"
Omg, the early Metamates jokes are already rolling in.
On one internal chat, an employee posted a head on chin emoji and asked, "does this mean we are on a sinking ship?"
— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) February 15, 2022