# Meta

> The company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, paid for by advertising.

- Level: Basic
- Topics: Tech companies
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/meta/
- In Spanish: [Meta](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/meta/)

**Meta** is the company that started as **Facebook**, created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while he was a student at Harvard. It bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and in 2021 renamed itself Meta Platforms to signal a bet beyond social networks. It is based in Menlo Park, California, and its apps are used by billions of people.

The apps are free, and nearly all of Meta's revenue comes from **advertising**. Businesses, from a corner bakery to global brands, pay to show ads in the feeds and stories of Facebook and Instagram, and Meta's systems choose who sees each ad based on what people do in its apps. That ability to reach a specific audience cheaply is what advertisers pay for. WhatsApp makes money mostly by charging businesses to message their customers.

Two other efforts are important for tech. Meta's AI lab builds the **Llama** models and publishes their weights, so anyone can download them and run them on their own computers, which made them a common base for open models. And **Reality Labs** makes virtual reality headsets (Quest) and smart glasses; it is a long-term bet that has cost a lot of money so far.

## An analogy

A huge town square that charges no entry. People come to meet their friends, and the square makes its money renting the walls and the noticeboards to shops that want those people to see their posters.

## Keep in mind

- Started as Facebook in 2004; renamed Meta in 2021; owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
- Its apps are free; nearly all of its revenue comes from targeted ads.
- It publishes the weights of its Llama AI models.
- Reality Labs builds VR headsets and smart glasses as a long-term bet.

## Go deeper

- [About Meta](https://about.meta.com/)
- [Llama](https://www.llama.com/)
- [Meta Platforms on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms)

## Related terms

- [Artificial intelligence](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/artificial-intelligence/): Getting computers to do things that, until recently, only people could do.
- [Model parameters](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/model-parameters/): The billions of numbers a model learns in training; '70B' means 70 billion of them.
- [Open-weights models](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/open-weights-models/): AI models whose trained numbers anyone can download and run on their own machines.