The social media platform is Facebook. “Meta” is a term that can be applied to several situations (disambiguation). Meta Platforms, Inc. Facebook, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., is a multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The company owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other businesses. Meta is one of the world’s most valuable organizations, along with Amazon, Google (Alphabet Inc), Apple, and Microsoft, and is considered one of the big tech companies in the United States of America.

 A large portion of the company’s revenue comes from selling advertising space to marketers. It also owns 9.99 per cent of Jio Platforms and has purchased Oculus, Giphy, and Mapillary. In October 2021, media sources stated that Facebook’s parent company intended to change its name to “reflect its focus on developing the metaverse.” Later that month, on October 28, it was renamed, Meta.

History

According to a sign atop the Thomson Reuters building, Facebook will join the NASDAQ in 2012. Facebook’s stock is still in its infancy. The Facebook corporate logo will look like this from 2019 to 2021. Facebook filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on January 1, 2012. (IPO). According to the preliminary prospectus, the company was seeking $5 billion in funding and claimed 845 million monthly active users and a website with 2.7 billion daily likes and comments. Zuckerberg will retain a 22 per cent ownership stake in Facebook and 57 per cent of the voting stock following the IPO Due to tremendous demand.

 Facebook announced on May 16, one day before the IPO, that it would offer 25% more shares than projected. The $16 billion IPO was the third-largest in U.S. history (slightly ahead of AT & T Wireless and only General Motors and Visa). The stock price gave the company a market value that topped all but a few U.S. firms, including Amazon, McDonald’s, Disney, and Kraft Foods, and Zuckerberg’s shares were valued at $19 billion. According to the New York Times, the transaction addressed worries about Facebook’s failure to attract advertisers, transforming the company into a “must-own stock.” According to Jimmy Lee of JPMorgan Chase, “the next great blue-chip.”

According to TechCrunch, “That’s a large multiple to live up to, and Facebook will likely need to introduce bold new revenue streams to justify the massive price,” adding, “That’s a large multiple to live up to, and Facebook will likely need to introduce bold new revenue streams to justify the massive price.” The stock began trading on May 18 but was delayed due to NASDAQ exchange technical concerns that day. The stock struggled to stay above the IPO price for the majority of the day, forcing underwriters to buy back shares to keep the price stable. Shares were valued at $38.23 at the closing bell, just $0.23 more than the IPO price and $3.82 less than the starting bell price.

The opening was described as a letdown by the financial press. The stock hit a new high for initial public offering (IPO) trading volume despite this. On May 25, 2012, the stock finished its first full week of trading at $31.91, a 16.5 per cent decline. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on Wall Street announced on May 22, 2012, that it had launched an investigation into whether banks backing Facebook had improperly shared information with a small number of clients rather than the general public. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin served a subpoena on Morgan Stanley on the same issue.

Various investors were enraged by the statements, triggering the filing of several lawsuits, including a class-action suit alleging more than $2.5 billion in losses due to the IPO. According to Bloomberg, retail investors may have lost $630 million on the shares since Facebook’s IPO. On May 2, 2014, Facebook’s internal motto was changed from “Move fast and break stuff” to “Move fast with a robust infrastructure.” Zuckerberg described the earlier credo as his “main instruction to his developers and staff” in a 2009 interview with Business Insider, adding.

 “Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not advancing fast enough.” In 2018, Oculus CEO Jason Rubin presented Facebook’s leadership with a 50-page vision plan titled “The Metaverse.” Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on content for early adopters, Rubin concedes in the letter that Facebook’s virtual reality business did not take off as expected. To beat out HTC, Apple, Google, and other V.R. competitors, he encouraged the corporation to act rapidly and decisively. In reaction to other participants’ engagement in the metaverse idea, he said, “Let’s construct the Metaverse to stop them from being in the V.R. industry in any substantial way.” Libra Networks was formed in May 2019 by Facebook to build their stable coin cryptocurrency.

Financial companies such as Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Uber, according to recent reports, endorse Libra. The companies are expected to contribute $10 million apiece to the launch of the Libra digital coin. The Libra Association plans to launch a restricted-format cryptocurrency in 2021, depending on when it receives approval to operate as a payment provider from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. Mergers and acquisition

For a complete list, see the Meta Platforms mergers and acquisitions page.

Throughout its existence, Facebook, Inc./Meta has acquired many companies (often identified as talent acquisitions).

It made one of its first major acquisitions in April 2012, when it paid $1 billion in cash and stock for Instagram.

[49] In October 2013, Facebook, Inc. purchased Onavo, an Israeli mobile web analytics company.

In February 2014, Facebook, Inc. announced that it would buy WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service, for the U.S. $19 billion in cash and stock.

Facebook bought Oculus V.R., which released its first consumer virtual reality headset in 2016, for $2.3 billion in stock and cash later that year.

In late July 2019, the company announced that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating antitrust breaches.

In late November 2019, Facebook, Inc. announced the acquisition of game developer Beat Games, which created one of the year’s most successful V.R. games, Beat Saber.

Facebook announced a $5.7 billion deal with Reliance Industries, an Indian multinational conglomerate, in April 2020 to purchase about 10% of Jio Platforms, Reliance’s digital media and services division.

In May 2020, Facebook, Inc. announced that it had purchased Giphy for $400 million in cash. It will collaborate with Instagram’s team. However, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) started in August 2021 that Facebook, Inc. might have to sell Giphy after an investigation indicated that the deal between the two businesses would damage the display advertising market. For failing to report all details regarding the acquisition and the continuing antitrust investigation, the CMA fined Facebook, Inc. $70 million.

In November 2020, Facebook Inc. announced its intention to buy Customer, a customer-service platform and chatbot specialist, to encourage enterprises to use their platform for business. According to reports, the Customer is worth somewhere between $1 billion and $1 billion.