Facebook just changed its ticker symbol

On Thursday, Facebook parent Meta Platforms (FB) officially changed its ticker to " $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ " to reflect its new focus on the metaverse.
It's a decisive step in the company's effort to shed traces of its old name. While a number of tech companies have undergone name changes in recent years, Meta's re-brand was especially notable, not only for the size of the company, but for the contentious circumstances in which it announced it would go from Facebook to Meta Platforms.
This is already an unsettled time at Meta, as longtime COO Sheryl Sandberg said last week she'd be stepping down this fall. Sandberg, who pioneered the company's ads model, was a key figure in Facebook's rise — and, by extension, has attracted scrutiny in the social media giant's scandals, too. As the company faced heightened criticism a few years ago, tensions reportedly grew high between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Especially amid the Cambridge Analytica fallout, Sandberg served as then-Facebook's public face, interfacing with both media and Congress – and Zuckerberg blamed her for the depth of the crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2018.
Sandberg is slated to be replaced by Javier Oliván, who's currently Meta's Chief Growth Officer and has been with the company for more than 14 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.