By Claire Ballentine
Meta, the new name for Facebook Inc., is a reference to the metaverse, something CEO Mark Zuckerberg is obsessed with. But it has some other meanings too — and that can get complicated, or even awkward.
In Portuguese and Spanish, it means “goal.” In Hebrew, the word means “died,” referring to a woman. More problematically, when used in Brazil — Facebook’s fourth largest market — meta can have a sexual connotation.
The metaverse that Zuck’s talking about is essentially a virtual-reality platform in which people congregate and communicate in digital environments.
QuicktakeWhat Is the Metaverse, and Why Does It Matter?
For traders, the name change gets even more complicated.
No longer just FB, the company’s stock will start trading as MVRS on Dec. 1.
Why not META? Well, see, that ticker’s already taken. An ETF called the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF has traded under META since its June launch.
But if you accidentally buy META instead of Meta, you will actually have bought some Meta anyway. That exchange-traded fund includes Facebook. Err, Meta. It makes up about 6 percent of fund.
Among the various problems facing Facebook, is a problem with diversity.
From 2013 to 2018, Black employees’ share of the company’s workforce during that period grew from 1 percent to jus 3.7 percent.
And in the C-suite, in 2013 Facebook had zero Black executives. In 2018, it had 32, a mere 3 percent of all executives.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com.
