Meta is the company formerly known as Facebook before its 2021 rebrand.
Facebook, Inc. changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms, Inc. in October 2021. The rebrand reflected chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s emphasis on the metaverse, a concept involving persistent virtual and augmented-reality environments.
The company’s main social network kept the name Facebook. Meta also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, so the corporate name and the names of individual products are not interchangeable.
Another common mix-up is assuming that the rebrand changed Facebook’s social-network name. It did not: Facebook remained a product and service, while Meta became the name of the parent company. The company’s stock ticker also changed from FB to META in 2022.