Meta as a Social Media Platform

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Meta as a Social Media Platform

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is one of the most common social media platforms of the current age. Nearly everybody uses Meta to connect with friends and communicate. It is a networking site which makes it easy for people to connect and share with family and friends without necessarily seeing each other. Meta was originally developed for college students. It was developed by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while enrolled as a student at Harvard University. By 2006, anyone with a valid email address could join Meta as long as they were above 13 years. Meta remains the world’s biggest social networking site, with over 1 billion users globally.

Over the years, Meta Company has acquired other platforms, including Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus VR, Onavo and Beluga. In 2022, Meta has almost 2.9 billion monthly users, a number that does not include its other acquisitions. Instagram is a video and photo-sharing application that Meta acquired on April 9, 2012, at the cost of $1 billion. Whatsapp is a Mobile messenger service that Meta acquired in February 2014 at the cost of $19 billion. Meta acquired Oculus VR, a virtual reality technology company, in March 2014 at $2 billion. It made the move just weeks after acquiring WhatsApp. The company was best known for its virtual reality video gaming headset, known as the Oculus Rift product. Meta acquired Onavo, a mobile web analytics business, in October 2019 at $100-200 million and Beluga, a messaging service, in March 2011 at an undisclosed cost (Kumar, 323). Meta is undertaking horizontal integration by purchasing other related businesses that are competitors. By purchasing Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta is controlling competition and growing as a business. This is a genius move for Meta as the company is expanding, and its revenues are increasing by extension.

References

Kumar, B. Rajesh. “Major Acquisitions by Facebook.” Wealth Creation in the World’s Largest Mergers and Acquisitions. Springer, Cham, 2019. 321-327.