Mark Zuckerberg

Mr Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive of Meta, owns about 12.8% of the company – which is still valued at more than $660bn.

Meta is the new name for Mark Zuckerberg’s business empire – a company that now extends beyond social media apps and into the design and manufacture of new technologies.

Facebook (the parent company) has changed its name to Meta, in reference tothe metaverse, which combines social media with virtual and augmented reality — this will be the company’s main focus moving forward. The social media platform will still be called Facebook and won’t be affected by the rebranding.

It marked the company’s worst one-day loss since its Wall Street debut in 2012. “Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be keen to coax the world into an alternate reality, but disappointing fourth-quarter results were quick to burst his metaverse bubble,” said Laura Hoy, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.