Mark Zuckerberg wants to completely cut off all ties between Facebook (FB) – Get Meta Platforms Inc. Class A Report and the controversies that have marked the daily life of the social media giant over the past five years.
This attempt at purification began last October when he changed Facebook’s name to Meta and imposed the concept of metaverse in conversations and business circles.
This strategy took a new step this week. Zuckerberg now wants Facebook employees to be called ‘Metamates’. Farewell ‘Facebookers’ then.
“Meta, Metamates, Me is about being good stewards of our company and mission,” Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday. “It’s about the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and to each other as teammates. It’s about taking care of our company and each other.”
The company’s new motto becomes “Meta, Metamates, Me.”
Other changes have also been made as tech reporter Alex Heath explained on Twitter: “‘Move fast’ is becoming ‘move fast together’; ‘be bold’ replaced with ‘build awesome things’; ‘focus on long term impact’ is a new one.”
The timing of the announcement is interesting. It is made after the announcement of disastrous results in the fourth quarter, which caused a fall in Meta on the stock market. The stock market valuation of the giant of social media had melted by more than $237 billion the session following the presentation of the results.
Zuckerberg’s personal net wealth has also shrunk a lot as much of it is tied to his stake in Meta.
The poor results, and especially the fall in the share price, would have rubbed off on the morale of the employees within the company.
And the infamous metaverse is a sinkhole at the moment. The division of Facebook working on this virtual universe, Reality Labs, which includes augmented and virtual-reality-related consumer hardware, software and content, is a sink for the company founded and led by Zuckerberg.
This division lost $10.2 billion in 2021, more than double the operating losses recorded in 2020 — $4.62 billion. In 2019, the operating loss was $4.5 billion.
Investors should expect losses in the coming months to continue to widen as in the fourth quarter, the division lost $3.3 billion, 26% more than it did in the quarter ended in September.
The metaverse is an alternate digital reality that has been receiving a great deal of attention. Humans will interact through three-dimensional avatars that can be controlled via virtual-reality headsets.
The switch from Facebookers to Metamates is now the subject of mockery on social media. Some Internet users wonder, for example, if it does not look like a dating application.
“Will you be my metamate,” mocked Steve Kovach on Twitter.
“Should have gone with Metamigos,” quipped another user.
Another chose to refer to the company’s stock market slack.
“This should cost the company at least another $100 billion in market value based on pure groanworthiness alone,” he posted.
Faced with the hilarity caused by the decision of the company Meta new CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth tried to provide a logical explanation. Bosworth made his name at Facebook through hardware, leading the company’s AR/VR and consumer device efforts.
Metamates “is a reference to a Naval phrase which Instagram has used for a while ‘Ship, Shipmates, Self” Boz posted on Twitter.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheStreet.
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