Meta Platforms is the parent corporation that changed its name from Facebook, Inc. in 2021.
The company announced the name change on October 28, 2021, and adopted Meta Platforms, Inc. as its corporate name. Facebook remained the name of the social-networking service, while the new corporate identity emphasized the company's interest in building the metaverse and operating several major social platforms.
Meta's family of products includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Those services give the company hundreds of millions of users and support a large advertising business, which has been central to its market value. Meta also reports Reality Labs, the division associated with virtual and augmented reality hardware and software.
The rebranding did not mean that Facebook disappeared or that the company became a new stock-market listing. Meta Platforms continued trading under the ticker symbol META after previously using FB. This distinction between a corporate parent, a product name, and a ticker symbol is useful when reading market-cap rankings.