Meta Platforms owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and changed its corporate name in 2021.
The company was founded as Facebook, Inc. in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Facebook began as a social-networking service for Harvard students before expanding to other universities and eventually the general public.
Facebook, Inc. acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. These services became important parts of its global family of apps. In October 2021, the parent company changed its name to Meta Platforms, Inc., while Facebook remained the name of its social-networking service.
The new name reflected the company’s emphasis on the metaverse, a broad concept involving persistent digital environments and immersive technologies. Meta is different from Alphabet: Alphabet is the parent of Google, while Meta is the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Market capitalization for Meta is measured from its publicly traded shares.