But in calling the firm "Meta", Mark Zuckerberg’s firm inadvertently chose a word that means “dead” in Hebrew.
On Twitter, the hashtag “#Facebook died” quickly caught on. In Israel, the Zaka search and rescue unit jokingly reassured online users: “Do not worry, we are on it.”
The new name adopted by the American-Jewish founder of the social network giant was meant to be a nod to the “metaverse,” said to be a new version of the internet that would incorporate virtual reality elements.
But such lofty ambitions were lost as one Jewish user asked whether anyone knew “when and where is the shivah for Facebook?”.
In Britain, Rabbi Alex Goldberg suggested that Mr Zuckerberg “really should have paid more attention in Hebrew School”.
Another user wrote: “The Jewish community will ridicule this name for years to come.”
The Hebrew word for dead transliterates as “met”; the adjective becomes “meta” in its feminine form.
Among the waves of ridicule on social media, one pessimist about the future of Facebook asked about the Hebrew meaning of Meta: “Perhaps that’s a message? Disclaimer: I’m not a conspiracist.”
Another Twitter user suggested: “Maybe Facebook (I guess Meta now?) should have done some focus groups on the rebranding.”
Mr Zuckerberg is believed to speak some Hebrew among several languages, also including Mandarin.
He quoted a Hebrew prayer when he gave the commencement address at Harvard in 2017.
His wife, Priscilla Chan, recently told The Sunday Times how they are bringing up their daughters Maxima, five, and four-year-old August as Jewish. On Friday nights, they enjoy kosher food alongside Asian dishes that reflect Ms Chan’s Chinese heritage.
She also revealed how Mr Zuckerberg recites a Jewish prayer in Mandarin as he tucks the girls up in bed.
This is not the first Hebrew-language blunder by Facebook. In 2017, a Palestinian construction worker was arrested after he posted a picture of the building site on which he was employed and wrote “good morning” in Arabic.
The phrase was mistranslated by automated Facebook software to say “hurt them”, sparking fears of a terrorist attack, according to Haaretz. The man was released after police officers was realised that a mistake had been made.
