Meta Platforms had 74,067 full-time employees as of December 2024, down from 67317 people in 2023. As of December 2023, more than 262,000 employees at tech companies worldwide were laid off throughout the year across more than one thousand companies. Facebook: how it all beganIn 2003, a sophomore at named Mark Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of the university's computer network in order to find photos of other students. He then would pair two of them next to each other on a program called “Facemash” and ask users to choose the more attractive person. At the beginning of 2004, Zuckerberg launched “The Facebook,” a social network dedicated to Harvard students, which later grew to encompass Columbia, Yale and Stanford. The popularity of this new service sky-rocketed and in mid-2004, Zuckerberg interrupted his studies and moved his operation to Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. By 2006, Facebook was open to the general public. In 2020, the company reported almost 86 billion U.S. dollars in revenue and a net income of 29.15 billion US dollars. It is also the most popular social network in the world, with 2.7 billion monthly active users as of December 2020. Facebook employee diversity criticismLike many other tech companies, Facebook has been criticized for having a diversity problem. As of June 2020, tech positions, as well as management roles in U.S. offices were overwhelmingly occupied by men. Furthermore, almost 41 percent of Facebook employees in the U.S. are White and only 3.9 percent are African-American, which has sparked concern regarding representation and equal opportunities. Around 63.2 percent of senior level positions are occupied by White employees and only 4.3 percent by Hispanic-Americans.

In March 2024, Threads generated around 28 million downloads worldwide. Meta Platforms released its X competitor Threads in July 2023. The app generated about 73 million app downloads within the first month of release. The text-based social platform was initially launched in 100 countries but was notable absent in the EU due to data protection regulations. On December 14, 2023, Threads was finally launched in the EU.

Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook Inc., continues to dominate the digital landscape with impressive financial growth. In 2024, the company's annual revenue reached a staggering 164.5 billion U.S. dollars, marking a significant increase from 134.9 billion U.S. dollars in the previous year. This upward trajectory reflects Meta's ability to monetize its vast user base across multiple platforms, solidifying its position as a tech giant. Advertising remains the primary revenue driver The bulk of Meta's revenue stems from its advertising operations, particularly within its Family of Apps segment. In 2024, this segment, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, generated 162 billion U.S. dollars. Despite a slight dip in 2022, Meta's advertising revenue has shown remarkable resilience and growth potential. User engagement and global reach The company's global influence is further illustrated by the fact that every minute, 138.9 million Reels are played on Facebook and Instagram, showcasing the ongoing evolution of user engagement within the Meta ecosystem.

In 2024, Meta Platforms generated a revenue of over 164 billion U.S. dollars, up from 134 billion USD in 2023. The majority of Meta’s profits come from its advertising revenue.Meta’s total Family of Apps revenue for 2022 amounted to 114 billion U.S. dollars. Additionally, Meta’s Reality Labs, the company’s VR division, generated around 2.1 billion dollars. Meta’s marketing expenditure for 2022 amounted to just over 15 billion U.S. dollars, up from 14 billion U.S. dollars in the previous year. Increasing audience base despite privacy misgivings Meta’s user numbers have continued to grow steadily throughout past years. In the fourth quarter of 2022, there was a total of 3.74 billion worldwide users across all of Meta’s platforms. For this same time frame, the company recorded 407 million monthly active users across Europe. Downloads of Meta’s app Oculus, for which virtual reality headsets are required, increased greatly from 2020 to 2021, reaching a total of 10.62 million downloads by the end of last year. Up until 2021, downloads had grown in a steady manner but from 2020 to 2021, they more than doubled.User numbers have increased despite data security issues and past controversy such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. There remains skepticism surrounding the idea of the metaverse in which Meta aims to immerse itself. Of surveyed adults in the United States, the majority said that they were concerned about their privacy if Meta were to succeed in creating the metaverse.

With roughly three billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide. The platform surpassed two billion active users in the second quarter of 2017, taking just over 13 years to reach this milestone. In comparison, Meta-owned Instagram took 11.2 years, and Google’s YouTube took just over 14 years to achieve this landmark. As of January 2022, Facebook’s leading audience base was in India, with almost 330 million users whilst the United States ranked second with an approximate total of 179 million users. The platform also finds remarkable popularity in Indonesia and Brazil. Social Media usage in the United States In January 2021, Facebook was the platform on which users in the United States spent the most time per day. The average time spent on Facebook was 33 minutes, followed by TikTok with 32 minutes and Twitter with 31 daily minutes. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, all major social media platforms saw an increase in daily usage, which then either plateaued or decreased in 2021. At the end of 2021, over a quarter of all Facebook users in the United States belonged to the 25 to 34 year age group and 18.2 percent of users were in the 35 to 44 year age group. In general, Facebook users were more likely to be female. Meta Platforms Meta is Facebook’s recently renamed parent company and had a grand total of 3.59 billion core product users by the final quarter of 2021. Other Meta products include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus – Meta’s virtual reality subsidiary which produces VR headsets. In 2021, Meta's revenue amounted to 117 billion US dollars, up from around 86 billion U.S. dollars in the previous financial year.

As of January 2024, Meta's largest audience were women aged 25 to 34 years, who made up 12.4 percent of users. Men of the same age group followed, accounting for 11.9 percent of users. Overall, less than 15 percent of Meta's audience, which includes platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, were aged between 65 years and above.

As of January 2025, 24.2 percent of Facebook users in the United States were aged between 25 and 34 years, making up Facebook’s largest audience in the country. Overall, 19 percent of users belonged to the 18 to 24-year age group. Does everyone in the U.S. use Facebook? In 2023, there were approximately 247 million Facebook users in the U.S., a figure which is projected to steadily increase, and reach 262.8 million by 2028. Social media users in the United States have a very high awareness of the social media giant. Expectedly, 94 percent of users had heard of the brand in 2023. Although the vast majority of U.S. social networkers knew of Facebook, the likeability of the platform was not so impressive at 68 percent. Nonetheless, usage, loyalty, and buzz around the brand remained relatively high. Facebook, Meta, and the metaverse A strategic rebranding from Facebook to Meta Platforms in late 2021 boded well for the company in Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to be strongly linked to the metaverse, and to be considered more than just a social media company. According to a survey conducted in the U.S. in early 2022, Meta Platforms is the brand that Americans most associated with the metaverse.  

In the fourth quarter of 2024, Meta's net income amounted to 20.8 billion U.S. dollars, up from 15.7 billion when compared to the previous quarter.Facebook company informationFacebook is the biggest social network worldwide. The platform generates the vast majority of its revenues through advertising – as of March 2020, 98 percent of Facebook’s revenues were derived from ad sales, making the company highly dependent on market regulations regarding digital ad sales. In 2019, Facebook was second only to Google in terms of digital advertising revenues. The company’s ad revenue during this period amounted to 69.7 billion U.S. dollars. Facebook is still among the fastest-growing tech companies in the world. In 2020, the company increased its revenue by 21.6 percent compared to the previous year. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also ranks among the richest internet billionaires with a personal net worth of roughly 97 billion U.S. dollars.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, around 86 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 79 and 65 percent of the respondents. The global social media marketing segment According to the same study, 59 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2024. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide. Social media for B2B marketing Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram – both run by Meta, Inc. – due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.

In the fourth quarter of 2024 social company Meta's total revenue amounted to 46.8 billion U.S. dollars, the majority of which was generated through advertising. Facebook company information It is hard to imagine internet without social media and social media without Facebook. With 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. In fact, almost two billion users access Facebook on a daily basis. Due to its immense reach, Facebook is a highly influential publisher and one of the leading platforms for influencer marketing worldwide, surpassed only by Instagram and YouTube. Brands value social media marketing for increased exposure, traffic, and leads, and it is no surprise that Facebook can deliver on these metrics in vast quantities.

In 2024, Google's parent company reported an annual revenue increase of 14 percent. In 2023, video content and streaming platform Netflix increased its annual revenue by seven percent. Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) generated a 16 percent year-on-year revenue increase during the same period. Additionally, Amazon had a year-over-year revenue increase of 12 percent for its fiscal year of 2023.

Android maintained its position as the leading mobile operating system worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024 with a market share of about 72.04 percent. Android's closest rival, Apple's iOS, had a market share of approximately 27.49 percent during the same period. The leading mobile operating systems Both unveiled in 2007, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have evolved through incremental updates introducing new features and capabilities. The latest version of iOS, iOS 18, was released in September 2024, while the most recent Android iteration, Android 15, was made available in September 2023. A key difference between the two systems concerns hardware - iOS is only available on Apple devices, whereas Android ships with devices from a range of manufacturers such as Samsung, Google and OnePlus. In addition, Apple has had far greater success in bringing its users up to date. As of February 2024, 66 percent of iOS users had iOS 17 installed, while in the same month only 13 percent of Android users ran the latest version. The rise of the smartphone From around 2010, the touchscreen smartphone revolution had a major impact on sales of basic feature phones, as the sales of smartphones increased from 139 million units in 2008 to 1.39 billion units in 2023. In 2020, smartphone sales decreased to 1.38 billion units due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Apple, Samsung, and lately also Xiaomi, were the big winners in this shift towards smartphones, with BlackBerry and Nokia among those unable to capitalize.

In 2024, Meta, formerly known as Facebook Inc., incurred advertising expenses of over 2.06 U.S. dollars. For the year 2023, Meta's advertising expenses totaled 2.02 billion and for 2022, this figure was 2.65 billion U.S. dollars.

As of October 2024, Alphabet was the biggest internet company worldwide with a market cap of over two trillion U.S. dollars Second-ranked Amazon had a market capitalization of 1.97 trillion U.S. dollars. The end of the 1990s in the United States saw the rise of a great number of internet companies, also called online companies or a variety of the name “dot com,” where the “.com” domain is derived from the word commercial. At the time, such startups were merely riding the wave of early internet business, but had little capital and perhaps one good idea. Few companies have survived the burst of the dot com bubble and even fewer have managed to become internationally successful. A few notable exceptions are American companies such as Google (founded in 1998), Amazon (founded in 1994) or eBay Inc. (founded in 1995), and the Chinese online giant Alibaba (founded in 1998), which have come to be some of the largest internet companies in the world. Topping the ranking of largest internet companies worldwide is currently Alphabet, the parent company of Google, with a market capitalization of 2 trillion U.S. dollars as of October 2024. Having started as a PhD project at Stanford University, the Google project slowly gained traction and is now the number one search engine in the world, with a market share of 86 percent on the search engine market. Due to a number of high profile acquisitions, Google has expanded its portfolio beyond search, to include the video content sharing site YouTube, the digital app platform Google Play Store, the webmail service Gmail and the web browser Google Chrome, to only name a few. As of May 2024, it is also the most visited multi-platform website in the United States, with almost 274 million U.S. unique visitors during that month alone. In October 2015, Google reorganized itself into a newly created parent company, the multinational conglomerate Alphabet Inc. The biggest internet companies in terms of their workforce are currently Amazon, Alphabet and Meta.