How big is Meta (Facebook)? Business Profile [2021]

Introduction to Facebook (Meta Platforms, Inc.)

Facebook needs no introduction. It is one of the most dominants social networking sites. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg along with his colleagues Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes on February 4, 2004. In 28th October 2021, Facebook rebranded itself as “Meta” with a focus to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses. Meta Platforms, Inc. (previously as Facebook Inc.) is a parent organization to all the business owned by Facebook inc.

Some interesting facts and figure related to Facebook are presented as below:

1. The company had 1.878 billion daily active users across the world with 40% from Asia-Pacific region.
2. Facebook earns $9.27 per users on average.
3. Facebook had a revenue of $26.171 billion in the first quarter of 2021 and 97% of the revenue comes from advertisement.
4. US & Canada alone contribute revenue worth $12.405 billion to Facebook. The Company had the Revenue of $9.497 billion in the first quarter of 2021.
5. As of December 2020, Facebook had the global workforce of 58,604 employees.

Meta Business Portfolio

When we talk about Facebook business expansion profile, we basically talk about Instagram and WhatsApp M&A deal. Some followers may know about Oculus VR and Giphy acquisition. But Facebook has a history of acquiring potential businesses that either stands out as a competitor or adds value to its then business operation. The company acquired by Facebook are:

S. No.	Company	Logo	Nature of Business	M&A Details
1	Parakey		Web based computer operating System	2007, M&A deal not disclosed
2	Connect U	n/a	Social Networking	2008, M&A deal $31 millions
3	FriendFeed	Closed	Social Networking Aggregator	2009, M&A deal $47.5 millions
4	Octazen Solutions		Talent Acquisition	2010, M&A deal not disclosed
5	Friendster		Social Networking Patents	2010, M&A deal $40 millions
6	Divvyshot		Photo Management	2010, M&A deal not disclosed
7	ShareGrove		Private Content-Sharing	2010, M&A deal not disclosed
8	Next Stop		Social Travel Recommendation	2010, M&A deal $2.5 million
9	Zenbe’s		Unified Messaging Platform	2010, M&A deal not disclosed
10	Chai Labs		Structured Content Extraction	2010, M&A deal $10 million
11	Drop.io		File-sharing service	2010, M&A deal $10 million
12	fb.com		Domain Name	2010, M&A deal $8.5 million
13	Hot Potato		Event Based Service	2010, M&A deal $10 million
14	Beluga		Group Messaging Service	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
15	Rel8tion		Mobile Advertising Platform	2011, M&A deals not disclosed
16	Snaptu		Mobile Application Platform	2011, M&A deal $70 million
17	RecRec	n/a	Image Convertor	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
18	Day Tum		Data Organization and Visualization	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
19	Sofa		Software Design	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
20	Mailrank		Email Prioritizer	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
21	Push Pop Press		Book App Publisher	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
22	Friend.ly		Social Question and Answer Service	2011,M&A deal not disclosed
23	Strobe		HTML5 App platform	2011, M&A deal not disclosed
24	Gowalla		Location Sharing Service	2011, M&A deal $3 million
25	Instagram		Photo and Video Sharing Social Network	2012, M&A deal $1billion
26	Caffeinated Mind	n/a	File Transfer Service	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
27	Tagtile		Mobile Loyalty Reward Service	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
28	Lightbox.com		Android Photo Sharing App	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
29	Glancee		Location-based discovery App	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
30	Karma		Mobile Commerce	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
31	face.com		Facial Recognition	2012, M&A deal $100 million
32	Spool		Mobile Bookmarking Service	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
33	Acrylic Software		Wallet App and RSS Feed Reader	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
34	Threadsy		Social Brand-Influencer Relationship Tool	2012, M&A deal not disclosed
35	Atlas Advertiser Suite		Microsoft’s Atlas Advertiser Suite	2013, M&A deal between <100 million
36	Hot Studio		Tools for Brands and Businesses	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
37	Osmeta		Stealth Mobile Software	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
38	Parse		Mobile-backend-as-a service	2013, M&A deal $85 million
39	Spaceport		Cross Platform Mobile Game Framework	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
40	Storylane		Blogging/sharing platform	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
41	Monoidics		Code Verification Software	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
42	Jibbigo		Speech Translation App	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
43	Onavo		Mobile Data Analytics	2013, M&A deal $100-200 million
44	Sportstream		Sports Analytics	2013, M&A deal not disclosed
45	Little Eye Labs		Android Performance Analysis	2014, M&A deal $15 million
46	Branch		Link-sharing and Social Conversation Service	2014, M&A deal $15 million
47	WhatsApp		Messaging App	2014, M&A deal $19 billion
48	Oculus VR		Virtual Reality Technology	2014, M&A deal $2 billion
49	Ascenta	n/a	Solar Powered Drone Maker	2014, M&A deal $20 million
50	PortoGeo Oy		Fitness and Activity Tracking App	2014, M&A deal not disclosed
51	Pryte		Mobile Data Plan Company	2014, M&A deal not disclosed
52	Private Core		Secure Server Technology Provider	2014, Merger deal not disclosed
53	Live Rail		Video Advertising Technology	2014, M&A deal $500 million
54	WaveGround Sound	n/a	Audio Production	2014, M&A deal not disclosed
55	wit.ai		Voice Recognition Technology	2015, M&A deal not disclosed
56	QuickFire		Video Compression Technology	2015, M&A deal not disclosed
57	The Find		Personalized Shopping Search Engine	2015, M&A deal not disclosed
58	Surreal Vision		Virtual Reality Technology	2015, M&A deal not disclosed
59	Endaga		Community Cellular Network Provider	2015, M&A deal not disclosed
60	Pebbles Interfaces		In depth-sensing technology and computer vision	2015, M&A deal $60 million
61	Masquered Technologies		Imaging Technology for Video	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
62	Two Big Eears		Immersive Audio Technology	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
63	Nascent Objects		Modular Electronics Platform	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
64	InfiniLED		Lower-Power LED Displays	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
65	Crowdtangle		Social Analytics Service that Monitors Trending Stories	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
66	FacioMetrics		Emotion Detection App	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
67	Zurich Eye	n/a	Computer Vision Software and Hardware	2016, M&A deal not disclosed
68	Ozlo		Conversational AI	2017, M&A deal not disclosed
69	Fayteq		Software Add-ons for Video Editing	2017, M&A deal not disclosed
70	tbh		Polling App	2017, M&A deal $100 million
71	confirm.io		Biometric ID Verification Platform	2018, M&A deal not disclosed
72	Bloomsburry AI		Natural Language Processing Technology (AI)	2018, M&A deal $30 million
73	Redkix		Enhanced Employee Communication App	2018, M&A deal $100 million
74	Vidpresso		Interactive Video Technology	2018, M&A deal not disclosed
75	Dreambit		Personalized Search Engine	2018, M&A deal not disclosed
76	Chainspace		Block Chain	2019, M&A deal not disclosed
77	Grokstyle		Visual Shopping Technology (AI)	2019, M&A deal not disclosed
78	Service Friend		Customer Service Chatbots	2019, M&A deal not disclosed
79	CTRL-Labs		Translate Movement and Neural impulses into digital signals	2019, M&A deal $1 billion
80	PlayGiga		Cloud Gaming	2019, M&A deal $85 million
81	Beat Games		VR Studio	2019, M&A deal not disclosed
82	Sanzaru Games		VR Gaming	2020, M&A deal not disclosed
83	Kustomer		Customer Relationship Management	2020, M&A deal $1 billion
84	Lemnis Technologies		Virtual Reality	2020, M&A deal not disclosed
85	Giphy		Search Engine for short video	2020, M&A deal $400 million
86	Scape Technologies		Computer Vision	2020, M&A deal <$40 million
87	Mapillary		Map Simulator	2020, M&A deal not disclosed
88	Ready At Dawn		Gamin Platform	2020, M&A deal <$30 million
89	Downpour Interactive		VR Simulator	2021, M&A deal not disclosed
90	Unit 2 Games		Gaming Platform	2021, M&A deal not disclosed
91	BigBox VR		Virtual Reality	2021, M&A deal not disclosed
92	AI.Reverie		Synthetic Data	2021, M&A deal not disclosed

What Meta Platforms, Inc. is really into?

Clearly, Meta Platforms, Inc. has been dominating the social media industry with its offerings such as Facebook and Instagram. Apart from this, WhatsApp has a significant base to impact the messaging world with a massive user base of 2 billion worldwide. WhatsApp has an estimated net-worth of around $10 billion in early 2021 where Instagram alone has the valuation of $100 billion in 2021. A lot of integration in Instagram and WhatsApp has relaunched these app as commercially viable platform in addition to what it was actually programmed for. Instagram’s Paid-partnership, WhatsApp’s Enterprise Solution and Payment Service integration has made the app more marketable.

Advertising has been a major revenue stream for Meta Platforms, Inc. But lately, M&A decisions from the company clearly signifies the area of interest of the company. All acquisition are either targeted to the platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to expand their marketability and making them commercially viable and stand them out to be supreme or targeted to experience and explore its horizon in Virtual Reality sector by strengthening Oculus Business. More than 15 recent acquisitions are companies working in Virtual Reality or Gaming sector.

Virtual Reality and Gaming world is next big thing in Facebook.

Reference

• Tech Funnel
• Tech Wyse