Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...

(formerly Facebook, Inc.) is a technology company that has acquired 91 other companies, including

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

. The WhatsApp acquisition closed at a steep $16 billion; more than $40 per user of the platform. Meta also purchased the defunct company ConnectU in a court settlement and acquired intellectual property formerly held by rival

Friendster Friendster was a social networking service originally based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003.Eric Eldon, August 4, 2008.Friendster raises $20 million, nabs a Googler to be CEO" VentureBeat. ...

. The majority of the companies acquired by Meta are based in the United States, and in turn, a large percentage of these companies are based in or around the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. Meta has also made investments in LuckyCal and Wildfire Interactive. Most of Meta's acquisitions have primarily been " talent acquisitions" and acquired products are often shut-down. In 2009, Meta (as Facebook)

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

posted a question on

Quora Quora is an American social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can post questions, answ ...

, titled "What startups would be good acquisitions for Facebook?", receiving 79 answers. He stated in 2010 that "We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people... In order to have a really entrepreneurial culture one of the key things is to make sure we're recruiting the best people. One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring great companies with great founders." The

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

acquisition, announced on April 9, 2012, appears to have been the first exception to this pattern. While continuing with a pattern of primarily talent acquisitions, other notable product focused acquisitions include the $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition and the $2 billion

Oculus VR Reality Labs, formerly Oculus VR, is a business and research unit of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as the Qu ...

acquisition.

Acquisitions

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Acquisitions By Facebook

Meta Platforms-related lists

Acquisitions

See also

References