Hours after Facebook CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is rebranding itself as ‘Meta’, the internet, especially Twitter, was flooded with memes and jokes on Facebook’s name change. Co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey joined the banter and took a jibe at the rebranding.
Dorsey took a dig at the name ‘meta’ after Facebook’s announcement. On his Twitter account, Dorsey tweeted the Oxford dictionary definition of the term ‘meta’, saying that it refers. He said that it refers to the conventions of its genre and it is self-referential.
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1453789734791090189?s=20
While a tweet on Dorsey’s social media platform reads, “BIG NEWS lol jk still Twitter”.
https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1453847172794003473?s=20
The post has garnered over 1.8 lakh likes and more than 27,000 retweets. Food chain McDonald’s is among those who have commented on the post. McDonald’s wrote, “You never picked up your 59.6 million McNuggets”.
https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/1453851725543137284
Popular food chain Wendy’s official Twitter handle too made fun of Facebook’s name change in a post. The tweet reads, “Changing name to meat”.
https://twitter.com/Wendys/status/1453805031463993346?t=AOxskceU33PovRwmOcyxlw&s=08
Facebook has said that the new name will be an attempt to focus on the metaverse which the company feels will be the future of social networking. Zuckerberg said that the blue app will be known as Facebook but its branding will be removed from other places such as WhatsApp and Instagram. He also added that all other apps will now function under the brand ‘Meta’ and Facebook will be one of the many different apps.
The Facebook CEO said that the word meta originates from the Greek word meaning ‘beyond’ and for him, it is a symbol of the fact that there is always more to build and a next chapter to the story. At the company’s annual Connect conference on Thursday, he said that his brand was linked to one product so tightly that it could not represent all the things they were doing today, let alone the future, hence the decision to rebrand with a different name that symbolizes the future has been taken.