Mark Zuckerberg Calls Company Employees 'Metamates'; Adds New Motto 'Meta, Metamates, Me' to Corporate Values

Mark Zuckerberg just announced new company values in a virtual meeting on Tuesday, Feb 15. He said company employees should now refer to themselves as "Metamates." He also announced their new company motto "Meta, Metamates, Me." Note that this serves as a rank on how employees should value their interests.

Technology company Meta Platforms Inc is the parent company of organizations like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and many other subsidiaries. It was originally called "Facebook," but the company rebranded itself to reflect its goal of being "the next evolution of social connection."

The company said last year that "its vision is to help bring the metaverse to life, so we are changing our name to reflect our commitment to this future."

Mark Zuckerberg and Metaverse: New Company Motto

The Verge senior reporter Alex Heath shared the details of the company meeting in a series of tweets. He outlined what CEO Mark Zuckerberg had explained as the "company's updated values." Note that many of these values are simply replacing pre-existing ones.

Zuckerberg said Meta's directive to "move fast" should be upgraded to "move fast together." He also said "be bold" will be replaced with "build awesome things." Then he added, "focus on long term impact."

Zuckerberg also emphasized "be open" should be changed to "live in the future." He said "be direct and respect your colleagues" will be simplified to "be open." Then he added, "employees are not supposed to nice (themselves) to death."

Notably, many of the changes seem to reflect Meta's ongoing growth. Some of the values can also be linked to services related to the metaverse, like the comment "focus on long term impact" and "build awesome things."

However, there are also a few skeptics about these changes. Sources from Gizmodo point out that the company might be doing these changes to hide its "unflattering history with buzzwords."

Meta Workers Will be Called Metamates

Near the end of the Twitter thread, Heath said Zuckerberg shared their new company motto in bold text, which is the "Meta, metamates, me." The comment obviously implied that all workers should then refer to themselves as Metamates!

Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, the current vice president of augmented and virtual reality who will soon be promoted as Meta chief technical officer, tweeted a reply about the Metamates concept. He emphasized that the term was created as a reference to the Naval phrase "Ship, Shipmates, Self."

Twitter user Max Woolf pointed out that by following this logic, Zuckerberg is advocating the interests of the company before the employees'.

Some fans commented this is a sign of solidarity among members who are working together to support the "bigger picture." Others argue it was some sort of abuse to the employee's well-being.

Unfortunately, Meta did not comment on the topic.