Meta is a multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Menlo Park, California, that operates 📝Facebook, 📝Instagram, 📝WhatsApp, Threads, and the 📝Reality Labs hardware division.
Originally incorporated in 2004 as Facebook, Inc., the company rebranded to Meta Platforms, Inc. in October 2021 under co-founder and CEO 📝Mark Zuckerberg to signal a strategic pivot toward the 📝metaverse — a persistent, immersive layer of virtual and augmented reality built on top of social experiences. The rebrand reframed Facebook from a single product into one node inside a broader family of apps and hardware.
Meta generates the majority of its revenue from targeted advertising sold against behavioral data collected across its social platforms, while operating 📝Oculus-derived VR headsets, Ray-Ban smart glasses, and large-scale AI research efforts (Llama, FAIR) through Reality Labs and its AI division. Its product portfolio reaches more than three billion monthly users globally, making it one of the most consequential information infrastructures on the internet.
The company is a recurring subject of regulatory and ethical scrutiny — antitrust action over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, privacy litigation following the 📝Cambridge Analytica disclosures, and ongoing debate over algorithmic amplification of harm. Meta's metaverse bet has drawn investor skepticism over Reality Labs losses, even as its AI investments increasingly position it as a frontier model provider rather than a pure social network.