Zuckerberg drags employees along for the metaverse ride with ‘Metamates’ memo

Facebook’s transmogrification to Meta is being pushed through by Zuckerberg as part of efforts to reposition the world’s dominant social media player as a 'distributed company’ defined by a list of phrases such as ‘Awesome things,’ ‘Live in the future’ and ‘Focus on long-term impact and be direct.’

Zuckerberg can’t take the credit for coining the phrase ‘Metamates’ as it was actually invented by cognitive sciences scholas Douglas Hofstadter, according to a Twitter post by Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief executive officer.

Signing off with the unorthodox naming convention in his memo as “Meta, Metamates, Me,” Zuckerberg wrote that the terminology was an embodiment of “... the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and to each other as teammates.”

Meta has been seeking ways to distance itself from an unending sequence of scandals that have combined to collectively dim the halo of Facebook as Silicon Valley’s brightest prospect, culminating in a $251.3bn market collapse after data showed it had slipped into reverse on key metrics for the first time.

A simple rebrand may not be enough, however, with Meta already drawn into implementing urgent ‘personal boundary’ measures amid complaints of avatar harrassment.