FB's new ticker: Why not LIKE or POKE?

The company that changed how politicians raise money, dissidents start revolutions and parents keep tabs on their kids announced its stock ticker symbol Wednesday.And it took about as much creativity as liking someone else’s status. This was Facebook’s place on the ticker, the electronic river of American commerce. This was a chance to make a statement, assert an identity — a choice as fundamental as picking blue for the ribbon at the top of the screen. But FB? It was a ticker symbol more fit for a bank or an insurance company. Not the social network that lets people find old flames, get themselves fired and announce their marriages and divorces. Even BOOK would have been a little more creative. (FACE was already taken by a cosmetics company.) A clever ticker can be like a vanity plate, helping investors remember a company. Snagging a coveted one-letter ticker — think “C” for Citigroup, formerly for Chrysler — is a status symbol in certain realms. Very occasionally, companies get creative. Mattress company Sealy is ZZ. Shoe seller Steven Madden is SHOO. Southwest Airlines is LUV, a nod toward Love Field airport in its hometown of Dallas. Veterinary hospital chain VCA Antech Inc. is WOOF, a nod toward — well, you get it. To pick a ticker symbol, a company has to ask the Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange or another exchange for permission to use it. The NYSE tells companies to submit their top three choices. And like elsewhere in business, there’s room for bruised egos.A few years ago, regulators decided that ticker-awarding wasn’t always fair, and created rules to keep stock exchanges from playing favorites. Regulators also blocked companies from piling up requests for ticker symbols just to keep rivals from taking them. The new rules reworked the number of letters allowed in a ticker. The NYSE had offered only one-, two- and three-letter symbols, Nasdaq fours and fives. The new regulations make it wide open — one to five letters should eventually be allowed on any exchange.The idea was to keep the length of the ticker symbol from dictating which exchange a company filed with. In its regulatory filing Wednesday evening, Facebook said it planned to trade on either the Nasdaq or the NYSE.