JAKARTA - After a decade of trading as Facebook, the social media giant now called Meta Platform Inc., began shedding the last vestiges of its old corporate avatar, as they began trading under the ticker symbol 'META' on Thursday, 9 June.
Meta Platforms Inc. became the new name of the eponymous social networking platform in October 2021. This marks their big gamble on the metaverse, the shared virtual world, which will replace the mobile internet.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta, founded Facebook in 2004 from his Harvard dorm, as a way for students to meet over the internet.
Little did the 19-year-old student know that Facebook would become an integral part of many people's social lives, with nearly three billion monthly users, and growing to include popular social media apps Instagram and Whatsapp in its universe.
Nearly two decades later, his company is pouring billions of dollars into the metaverse, a futuristic idea of a virtual environment where users can work, socialize, and play, by adding new features to hardware that serve as access points.
"Companies that change their names and official tickers are usually trying to signal that there has been a fundamental change in the underlying business model," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, as quoted by Reuters.
"I'm not sure if it really makes much of a big difference. I still call it Google and Facebook," added Hogan.
Meta's stock has fallen nearly 42% this year as it bucked criticism from lawmakers and regulators for its market power, algorithmic decisions, and policing of abuse. But they are still very confident to survive all these demands and develop into a metaverse company in the world.
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