Former Facebook boss and now Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is continuing to push the company’s rebrand albeit in some strange ways.
It’s been a tough time of late for Zuckerberg as the company sheds billions from its share price as users abandon the platform for new entrants such as TikTok.
Not to be defeated, the company is forging ahead with new values and goals on both employees and the public, with Zuckerberg personally trying to ensure that everyone is on the same page about what Meta actually is.
According to a recent announcement, reported by US tech site The Verge, Zuckerberg has announced that Meta will not “nice ourselves to death” and employees are now to be known as ‘Metamates’. Meta employees about 72,000 people globally.
The new Meta values are changing from “move fast” to “move fast together,” while “be bold” is being replaced with “build awesome things” and “focus on long term impact”.
“Be open” is becoming “live in the future” and “be direct and respect your colleagues” is changing to “be open.” If that makes sense?
When it was announced staffers were to become ‘Metamates’, The Verge (who clearly relied on a Meta mole for its story) revealed: “A slide shows this text in bold all caps next to Zuck talking. I am told Zuck said this without laughing and explained it had to do with a story about ships and shipmates!”
The Verge journalist who broke the story, Alex Health, later tweeting:
Meta’s CTO, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, explained the term “Metamates” further in a tweet responding to Heath’s thread.
“Fun fact: Metamates was coined by none other than (famed US physics researcher) Douglas Hofstadter himself after an employee cold emailed him for ideas after our rebrand. I love it!” wrote Bosworth.
“Also the saying is a reference to a Naval phrase which Instagram has used for a while “Ship, Shipmates, SelfHave your say in our news democracy,” he added.
