analysis
“Live in the future!”
Braving the storm with snappy slogans: Captain Zuckerberg decorates his sinking ship
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to implement his vision at all costs: employees should henceforth call themselves metamates.
© Meta
The past few weeks have not been good for Meta (formerly Facebook). Share price slipped, major investor Peter Thiel lost and a huge lawsuit in the USA. Trying to reboot seems pretty desperate.
At Meta there is a fire in every corner. And what does CEO Mark Zuckerberg do? Instead of solving urgent problems and complaints transparently and with a clear head, the company founder loses himself in a strange-looking realignment of internal company values. From now on, employees should call themselves “Metamates” and a whole collection of new slogans should offer support and orientation.
“metamate”. So that’s not the Coffee substitute from the Berlin company of the same name meant, but the new title of the employees, who were previously called Facebookers. As the New York Times reports, it’s all part of an internal change that Mark Zuckerberg, against all odds, wants to initiate. Because of the multiple meaning of the word “mate” it is not immediately clear whether it means “mate” or “mate”, i.e. the assistants of the helmsman on sailing ships. However, the nautics are excellent for changing course.
New names, new guidelines
The company founder also throws overboard former mottos such as “Be bold” (“be bold”) or “Focus on impact”. Instead, it now reads “Live in the future,” “Build awesome things,” “Focus on long-term impact,” and ” Meta, Metamates, me” (“Meta, Metamate and I”). For Zuckerberg, these mottos would show how meta needs to evolve to achieve the “shared vision,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
The last saying in particular raises the question of whether Zuckerberg wants to combat internal disorientation with a newly created sense of community. The renaming of the group and the absolute focus on the Metaverse, so far nothing more than various chat rooms in the virtual world, came as quite a surprise for some employees. Zuckerberg explains: “The slogan describes that we must take good care of our company and our mission. It’s about the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and for our teammates. It’s about caring for our company and for each other take care of.”
ship ahoy!
The internal renovation comes at a difficult time for Meta. At the beginning of February, the share slipped to an unprecedented extent, and shortly thereafter, Peter Thiel, one of the first investors to leave the board of directors. Meanwhile, users and politicians laughed at the concern that Meta would have to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if data protection rules were tightened, and Texas is currently preparing a lawsuit that, if successful, could mean bankruptcy for the powerful internet company.
And while, according to the New York Times, countless hearts followed as a reaction in the public chats, it apparently looked different in private conversations. “How is this going to change our company?”, “We keep changing the names of everything, it’s confusing” and “Does the new name mean we’re sailors on a sinking ship?” were questions that the employees had asked themselves.
The call for shared responsibility also shows that Zuckerberg needs all the help he can get in the current situation. The reliable steamer Facebook is running aground in the foreseeable future, Whatsapp and Instagram have to contend with ever-stronger competition, and it has been proven that new users are becoming increasingly difficult to find.
10 to 15 years of odyssey?
Perhaps the biggest problem, which is why a tight-knit community is now needed: The vision of the Metaverse, i.e. an extensive virtual world that Zuckerberg wants to create, is still years away from completion. To the star When asked, the company stated that “many of these products will not be fully realized for the next 10 to 15 years.” As a reminder: The period corresponds to almost the entire company history – Facebook started in 2004 as a campus project, only years later did it become a global corporation.
Until then, the “Metamates” still need a lot of staying power in an increasingly rough sea, where it is only a matter of time before a Kaventsmann dismantles the Facebook flagship into its individual parts.
sources: New York Times, Facebook