Meta was founded as Facebook Inc. in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, Rob Jagnow, Dustin Moskovitz, and Nicholas Daniel-Richards while studying at Harvard. It is a social networking platform that enables users to connect through sharing pictures or written text and running ads campaigns.
Before founding Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg created and published a website called FaceMash in October 2003 for rating the attractiveness of students at Harvard. FaceMash quickly gained popularity reaching approximately 22,000 photo views within a few days of its launch before being shutdown. Zuckerberg was summoned to the Harvard Administrative Board and threatened to be expelled from Harvard for creating FaceMesh because he did not have permission to use student photos. The Harvard Administrative Board made the decision to let Zuckerberg continue his education at Harvard, and Zuckerberg went on to create Thefacebook in February 2004 with some of his fellow students at Harvard— Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Nicholas Daniel-Richards.
Thefacebook was the name of the company until August 23, 2005, when the company purchased facebook.com for $200,000 and changed its name to Facebook. Other domains purchased by Facebook include FB.com for $8.5 million in November 2010 from the The American Farm Bureau Federation to give Facebook employees FB.com email addresses. The deal for FB.com also included The American Farm Bureau Federation relinquishing their rights to use FB.org.
On the 28th of October, 2021, Facebook rebranded as Meta. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram will retain their names but the company that produces and maintains them is now named Meta. The name was selected to echo the major product that Zuckerberg hopes Facebook—now Meta—will be represented by: the metaverse, which is the name of a shared online 3D virtual space that different companies are interested in developing as a kind of future version of the internet.
On April 9, 2012 Facebook acquired Instagram, a social media company focused on sharing user photos, for $1 billion in a combination of Facebook stock and cash. At the time Facebook acquired Instagram, Instagram had approximately 30 million active users making Instagram the largest purchase ever made by Facebook in terms of both active audience size and price. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and co-founder of Facebook, made the following statement regarding the company's decision to purchase Instagram:
We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all, but providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.
In February 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp, a company offering a social messaging platform, for $19 billion. Facebook made the acquisition as a defensive investment after analyzing WhatsApp data and determining WhatsApp's ability to compete with Facebook. Facebook awarded 177.8 million shares of Facebook of Class A common stock, $45.9 billion in cash to the shareholders of WhatApp, and 45.9 million restricted stock units the the employees of WhatsApp. At the time of acquiring WhatsApp, the WhatsApp platform had approximately 450 million users, was gaining about 1 million users every day, and according to OnDevice Research was the world's most popular smartphone messaging application.
In July 2014, Facebook announced acquiring Oculus, a company making virtual reality products, for $2 billion. Facebook paid $400 million in cash and approximately $1.6 billion in Facebook stock. Facebook also announced offering an additional $300 million in stock and cash if certain milestones are met by the company post-acquisition as performance incentives. The $2 billion acquisition price of Oculus is based on a trading price of Facebook stock at $69.35 per share. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and co-founder of Facebook, made the following comments regarding Facebook's decision to acquire Oculus and Facebook's plan for the company:
We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.
