Meta Platforms was known as Facebook, Inc. before 2021.
Facebook, Inc. changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms, Inc. in October 2021. The rebranding reflected the company's intention to develop a broader collection of social, virtual-reality, and other technology businesses rather than being identified only with the Facebook social network.
The company still operates Facebook, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other products. Reality Labs covers virtual-reality and related hardware and software, including the Quest product line. The corporate name change did not rename the Facebook service itself.
Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Meta remains a major public technology company whose market capitalization changes with investor expectations, earnings, and share prices. The former corporate name is therefore a useful distinction from the continuing Facebook product name.