Meta Platforms created Facebook and changed its corporate name in 2021 to reflect its focus on the metaverse.
The company was founded as Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes in 2004. It began as a social-networking service for students at Harvard University before expanding to other universities and then to the general public.
Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Those services, together with Facebook itself, became important parts of the company’s family of social and messaging products. Advertising has been the group’s principal business model.
In October 2021, Facebook Inc. changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms, Inc. The rebranding emphasized virtual and augmented reality ambitions, although Facebook remained the name of one of its products. Meta is therefore the parent-company answer, not the name of the social network.