Facebook adopted the name Meta as its parent-company name in 2021.
Facebook announced the rebranding to Meta Platforms on October 28, 2021, and the corporate name change took effect later that year. The new name reflected chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on building the metaverse, a collection of proposed immersive digital experiences involving virtual and augmented reality.
The company’s social-networking products did not all change names. Facebook remained the name of the social network, while Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger continued as separate major products. Meta also retained its public stock-market identity, changing its ticker from FB to META in 2022.
The rebranding did not mean that Facebook had become a different company overnight. Advertising across its family of apps remained its central source of revenue, while Reality Labs represented its investment in virtual and augmented reality. Meta is therefore the corporate parent, not the name of Facebook’s original social network.