Meta Platforms is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and is tracked as a major public company by market capitalization.
The company was called Facebook, Inc. until it changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms in October 2021. The rebrand emphasized the company’s interest in building the metaverse, while Facebook remained the name of its flagship social-networking service.
Meta’s market value is influenced by advertising demand, user engagement, artificial-intelligence investment, regulatory developments, and expectations for products such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Its shares are listed publicly under the ticker symbol META. The market capitalization therefore reflects the value investors assign to the whole parent company, not to Facebook alone.
A frequent error is treating Meta as the owner of every major social platform. TikTok is operated by ByteDance, while WeChat is associated with Tencent. Meta’s principal family of apps is Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.