Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
- Meta's move away from its former Facebook name came amid new wave of controversy for the company.
- Mark Zuckerberg called it "ridiculous" to connect a new name to ongoing "Facebook Papers" coverage.
- Yet, executive Chris Cox did just that when asked by an employee about the success of the new name.
When Facebook first revealed it was renaming itself Meta in October 2021, the company said it was about nothing more than a new desire to be "metaverse first." It didn't take long for a top executive to revel in the new name elbowing out bad press.
The change to Meta came about three weeks after whistleblower Frances Haugen went public on 60 Minutes as the person behind the disclosures being reported on at The Wall Street Journal, dubbed the "Facebook Papers," revelations from which were being covered by the press globally. Given widespread speculation that the timing of the name change was related to the whistleblower disclosures, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose recent executive transformation was reported on by Insider, said such a connection was "ridiculous." His chief product officer Chris Cox easily connected the two about two weeks later, according to Insider's report.
During a company-wide Q&A with employees in November 2021, led by Cox and Sheryl Sandberg, then Meta's chief operations officer, an employee asked about the overall success of the new Meta name, a longtime employee who has since left the company recalled. Cox said the name change was successful, explaining his measure of success was the amount of press coverage of the name change compared to the whistleblower disclosures.
"It was more than double the volume of the Facebook Papers coverage," Cox said on the call. He added that the coverage was also "neutral to positive in tone."
"That's the kind of thing that we only could have dreamed of when we did the change in terms of press coverage," he went on. "And it was a really big deal because Facebook Papers was a big story, especially inside the US."
While Cox's focus on the comparison was the volume of press coverage, the former employee who was present for the call was surprised by the answer. The person told Insider they and other colleagues at the time took it as "a bald statement that the name change was meant to move the attention of the press."
Although Zuckerberg's multi-billion metaverse push has yet to become a financial plus for Meta, the rename drove months of coverage around the metaverse, and the new name has stuck with the media. As Eric Schiffer, CEO of private equity firm The Patriarch Organization, said of the name change: "It is absolutely a genius move to shift away, to rebrand to the metaverse, and wash away the past pain."
Are you a Meta employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.