Which company, founded in 2004, operates the social network Facebook?
Answer
Meta Platforms
Meta Platforms, founded in 2004, operates the social network Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes launched Facebook in February 2004 while they were students at Harvard University. The service initially targeted Harvard students before expanding to other universities and then the general public.
Facebook’s advertising business grew rapidly as users and businesses joined the platform. The company’s corporate name changed from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms in 2021, but Facebook remained the name of the social network.
This distinction matters in market-capitalization questions: Facebook is a product and Meta Platforms is the publicly traded parent company. Meta also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.