meta
(4)
WhatsApp made distance cheap.
Three billion people came for a simpler way to talk. The business built around their conversations is getting considerably more complicated.
Zefr knows what your ad is sitting next to
A business born around movie clips now helps advertisers judge the company their ads keep. Its wager: understanding one video is more useful than fearing an entire channel.
Threads and the trouble with a borrowed crowd
Instagram could get people through the door. Keeping them there required a different guest list - and a lesson in the unglamorous business of building a habit.
Meta
Meta Platforms is the company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads - a Family of Apps used by more than 3 billion people daily. Founded as Facebook in 2004 and renamed Meta in 2021, it runs one of the world's largest digital advertising businesses while pouring tens of billions into artificial intelligence (the open-weight Llama models and Meta AI assistant) and wearable computing (Quest headsets and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses). In 2025 it reported roughly $201 billion in revenue.