Meta Platforms Stock

Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) engages in the development of products that enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) headsets, and wearables. The company also helps people discover and learn about what is going on in the world around them, enable people to share their experiences, ideas, photos and videos, and other activities with audiences ranging from their closest family members and friends to the public at large, and stay connected everywhere by accessing its products. Meta is moving the company’s offerings beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the metaverse, which is the next evolution in social technology. The company is innovating in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to build new experiences that help make its platform more social, useful, and immersive.

The company generates substantially all of its revenue from selling advertising placements on its family of apps to marketers, which is reflected in FoA. Ads on its platform enable marketers to reach people across a range of marketing objectives, such as generating leads or driving awareness.

Marketers purchase ads that can appear in multiple places, including on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and third-party applications and websites. RL generates revenue from sales of consumer hardware products, software, and content.

The company’s AI investments support initiatives across its products and services, helping power the systems that rank content in its apps, its discovery engine that recommends relevant content, the tools advertisers use to reach customers, the development of new generative AI experiences, and the tools that make its product development more efficient and productive.

Segments

The company operates through two segments: Family of Apps (FoA) and Reality Labs (RL).

FoA includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services.

RL includes the company’s augmented, mixed and virtual reality related consumer hardware, software, and content.

Family of Apps Products

Facebook: Facebook helps give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. It's a place for people to share life's moments and discuss what's happening, nurture and build relationships, discover and connect to interests, and create economic opportunity. They can do this through Feed, Reels, Stories, Groups, Marketplace, and more.

Instagram: Instagram brings people closer to the people and things they love. Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, Live, and messaging are places where people and creators can connect and express themselves through photos, video, and private messaging, and discover and shop from their favorite businesses.

Messenger: Messenger is a simple yet powerful messaging application for people to connect with friends, family, communities, and businesses across platforms and devices through text, audio, and video calls.

Threads: Threads is an application for text-based updates and public conversations, where communities come together to discuss topics of interest. People can connect directly with their favorite creators and others who love the same things or build a loyal following of their own to share their ideas, opinions, and creativity with the world.

WhatsApp: WhatsApp is a simple, reliable, and secure messaging application that is used by people and businesses around the world to communicate and transact in a private way. Within WhatsApp the company launched WhatsApp Channels, a one-to-many broadcast service designed to help people follow information from people and organizations that are important to them.

Reality Labs Products

Many of the company’s metaverse investments are directed toward long-term, cutting-edge research and development for products that are not on the market and may only be fully realized in the next decade. This includes exploring new technologies such as neural interfaces using electromyography, which lets people control their devices using neuromuscular signals, as well as innovations in AI and hardware to help build next-generation interfaces. In the near term, the company is continuing to develop early metaverse experiences through Reality Labs products that help people feel connected, anytime, anywhere.

The company’s product offerings in VR include its Meta Quest devices, as well as software and content available through the Meta Quest Store, which enable a range of social experiences that allow people to defy physical distance while engaging in gaming, fitness, entertainment, and more. For example, Meta Horizon Worlds is a social platform where people can interact with friends, meet new people, play games, and attend virtual events.

To drive greater adoption and acceptance of VR the company has also introduced MR capabilities, which allow users to experience the immersion and presence of VR while still being grounded in the physical world, through its Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 3 devices.

The company has continued to advance its augmented reality (AR) roadmap to include offerings, such as the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which feature Meta AI, its advanced conversational assistant, as well as offer the ability to livestream video and let people stay more present through hands-free interaction. The company also offers Meta Spark, a platform that allows creators and businesses to build AR experiences that bring the digital and physical worlds together in its apps.

In general, while all of these investments are part of its long-term initiative to help build the metaverse, the company’s VR and social platform efforts also include notable shorter-term projects developing specific products and services to go to market, whereas its AR efforts are primarily directed toward longer-term research and development projects. In particular, the company regularly evaluates its product roadmaps and make significant changes as its understanding of the technological challenges and market landscape and its product ideas and designs evolve.

Sales and Operations

The majority of the company’s marketers use its self-service ad platform to launch and manage their advertising campaigns. The company also has a global sales force that focuses on attracting and retaining advertisers and providing support to them throughout the stages of the marketing cycle from pre-purchase decision-making to real-time optimizations to post-campaign analytics. The company works directly with these advertisers, as well as through advertising agencies and resellers. The company operates offices in approximately 90 cities around the globe, the majority of which have a sales presence. The company also invests in and rely on self-service tools to provide direct customer support to its users and partners.

For its RL products, the company’s sales and operations efforts utilize third-party sales channels, such as retailers, resellers, and its direct-to-consumer channel, Meta.com. These efforts are focused on driving consumer and enterprise sales and adoption of the company’s Meta Quest portfolio of products and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Marketing

Historically, the company’s communities have generally grown organically with people inviting their friends to connect with them, supported by internal efforts to stimulate awareness and interest. In addition, the company has invested and will continue to invest in marketing its products and services to grow its brand and help build community around the world.

Government Regulation

The GDPR also requires submission of personal data breach notifications to the company’s lead European Union privacy regulator, the IDPC, and includes significant penalties for non-compliance with the notification obligation, as well as other requirements of the regulation.

The company is continuing to engage with regulators on its new consent model, including regarding compliance with requirements under the GDPR, Digital Markets Act (DMA), and EU consumer laws. The company is subject to content-related legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the European Union, which started to apply to its business as of August 2023, imposes certain restrictions and requirements for its products and services, and subjects it to increased compliance costs. The company is subject to regulatory orders or consent decrees, including the modified consent order it entered into with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which took effect in 2020 and among other things, required it to significantly enhance its practices and processes for privacy compliance and oversight.

History

The company was founded in 2004. It was incorporated in Delaware in 2004. The company was formerly known as Facebook, Inc. and changed its name to Meta Platforms, Inc. in 2021.