The largest social media company worldwide. Meta Platforms is the publisher of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads. It also offers the Quest brand of virtual reality goggles and Ray-Ban smart glasses. Originally founded as Facebook, Inc., the company changed its name to Meta Platforms, Inc. in 2021. The company is also heavily involved in AI (see
Meta AI). See
Facebook,
Instagram,
WhatsApp Messenger and
Meta Quest.
The Metaverse and Beyond
The Meta name was likely chosen because it means "beyond" in Greek. In addition, in the early 2020s, the company was making a big push in the metaverse world, which all but disappeared due to a lack of standards. See
metaverse.