Shares of "Meta Materials" soared late Thursday after Facebook announced it would change its name to "Meta." "Meta Materials" is unrelated to Facebook; it is a Canadian company specializing in materials science, offering technologies such as blocking specific colors of light with transparency or heating a car window invisibly. By the close of trading on Thursday, shares of the Canadian company rose by as much as 25%, following a 4.8% increase prior to Facebook's announcement of the name change, according to CNBC.
This is not the first time companies have reaped substantial revenues and benefits from name similarities. In April 2019, sales for a small Chinese wireless communications company called "Zoom Technologies" surged by over 80% alongside the rise of the video conferencing app "Zoom." Similarly, "Clubhouse Media" experienced growth on February 1, driven by increasing investor interest in the Clubhouse app, especially after the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, announced to his Twitter followers that he would appear on the app the same day.
Facebook announced on Thursday that it would change its name to "Meta" in the face of numerous criticisms on various fronts. The company stated that the name change "will unify its various apps and technologies under a new brand." The announcement was made during a speech by Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company's annual Connect conference on October 28. He explained, "The name Facebook does not encompass everything the company does. Right now, our brand is closely linked to one product." This comes at a time when Facebook is facing increasing scrutiny from the U.S. government regarding its business practices.
