About Meta (previously Facebook)
Meta, formerly Facebook, is one of the largest tech companies in the world, and the reigning monarch of social media. What started in a Harvard dorm room became the social media powerhouse of a generation. On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin officially launched Facebook. You may be familiar with the drama of its early days as performed by Jesse Eisenberg in the Oscar-winning film The Social Network. Today, Meta is more than just a social media site, encompassing chat platforms, virtual reality, image databases, and more.
For the first seven years of its existence, Meta stuck to its social media roots, providing a platform to share updates, make friends, share photos, and engage with groups. In 2011, it made its first major product development by introducing Messenger. The messaging app is available on the Facebook website as well as in a mobile app form, making it a versatile communication tool. The next year, Meta made a huge move in acquiring Instagram. Today, Instagram as over 1 billion monthly users. In 2014, Meta made another large acquisition, this time expanding further into the messaging market by taking over WhatsApp. On Meta’s platforms, over 200 million businesses use its apps to connect to customers, 100 billion messages are shared daily, and $5 billion have been raised through fundraisers put on through Meta’s platforms.
Meta operates out of over 80 cities globally, and has 17 data centers supported by 100 percent renewable energy. Its brands include six of the most popular and innovative communication platforms in the world. They include Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and Workplace. Mark Zuckerberg is worth over $100 million, and continues to run Meta with as much zeal as he did at Harvard.