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.

Meta Financial is a public company headquartered in South Dakota with an estimated 1,134 employees. In the US, the company has a notable market share in at least one industry: Real Estate Loans & Collateralized Debt, where they account for an estimated 0.2% of total industry revenue.

As of June 2022, 57.6 percent of employees in leadership roles at Meta were white, whilst 28.6 percent were Asian. Overall, 11.7 percent of employees in non-technical roles were Hispanic, and 11.2 percent were Black. Moreover, Asian employees accounted for the majority of employees in technical roles, making up 55.8 percent of employees in these positions.

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.

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.

As of June 2022, only 37.1 percent of all global Meta Platforms employees were women. The majority of employees were male. Overall, women made up 25.8 percent of tech roles and 60.5 percent of non-tech roles.

This is a collection of layers created by Tian Xie(Intern in DDP) in August, 2018. This collection includes Detroit Parcel Data(Parcel_collector), InfoUSA business data(BIZ_INFOUSA), and building data(Building). The building and business data have been edited by Tian during field research and have attached images.The original source for these layers are: Business Data: InfoUSA business database purchased by DDP in 2017Building Data: Detroit Building Footprint data Parcel Data: from Detroit Open Data Portal, download in May 2018.For field research by Tian, some fields have been added and some records in building and business have been edited. For business data, Tian confirmed most of public assessable businesses and deleted those which do not exist. Also, Tian add new Business to the business data if it did not exist on the record. For building data, Tian recorded the total business space for each building, not-empty business space, occupancy status, parking adjacency status, and took picture for every building in downtown Detroit. Detail field META DATA:InfoUSA Business OBJECTID_1 COMPANY_NA: company nameADDRESS: company addressCITY: citySTATE: stateZIP_CODE: zip codeMAILING_CA: source InfoUSAMAILING_DE source InfoUSALOCATION_A source InfoUSA: addressLOCATION_1 source InfoUSA: cityLOCATION_2 source InfoUSA: stateLOCATION_3 source InfoUSA: zip codeLOCATION_4source InfoUSALOCATION_5 source InfoUSACOUNTY: countyPHONE_NUMB: phone numberWEB_ADDRES: website addressLAST_NAME: contact last nameFIRST_NAME: contact first nameCONTACT_TI: contact type CONTACT_PR: CONTACT_GE: contact genderACTUAL_EMP: employee numberEMPLOYEE_S: employee number classACTUAL_SAL: actual sale SALES_VOLU: sales value PRIMARY_SI: primary sales valuePRIMARY_1: primary classificationSECONDARY_: secondary classification SECONDARY1SECONDAR_1SECONDAR_2CREDIT_ALP: credit level CREDIT_NUM: credit numberHEADQUARTE: headquarteYEAR_1ST_A: year openOFFICE_SIZ: office sizeSQUARE_FOO: square footFIRM_INDIV:PUBLIC_PRI Fleet_size FRANCHISE_ FRANCHISE1 INDUSTRY_SADSIZE_IN_METRO_AREA INFOUSA_ID LATITUDE: yLONGITUDE: xPARKING: parking adjacency NAICS_CODE: NAICS CODENAICS_DESC: NAICS DESCRIPTION parcelnum*: PARCEL NUMBER parcelobji* PARCEL OBJECT IDCHECK_* ACCESSIABLE* PUBLIC ACCESSIBILITYPROPMANAGER* PROPERTY MANAGERGlobalID Notes: field with * means it came from other source or field research done by Tian Xie in Aug, 2018BuildingOBJECTID_12 BUILDING_I: building idPARCEL_ID : parcel id BUILD_TYPE: building type CITY_ID：city id APN: parcel number RES_SQFT: Res square feet NONRES_SQF non-res square feetYEAR_BUILT: year built YEAR_DEMOHOUSING_UN: housing unitsSTORIES: # of stories MEDIAN_HGT: median height CONDITION: building condition HAS_CONDOS: has condos or not FLAG_SQFT: flag square feet FLAG_YEAR_: flag yearFLAG_CONDI: flag condition LOADD1: address number HIADD1 (type: esriFieldTypeInteger, alias: HIADD1, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, nullable: true, editable: true)STREET1: street name LOADD2: HIADD2 (type: esriFieldTypeString, alias: HIADD2, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, length: 80, nullable: true, editable: true)STREET2 (type: esriFieldTypeString, alias: STREET2, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, length: 80, nullable: true, editable: true)ZIPCODE: zip code AKA: building name USE_LOCATOTEMP (type: esriFieldTypeString, alias: TEMP, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, length: 80, nullable: true, editable: true)SPID (type: esriFieldTypeInteger, alias: SPID, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, nullable: true, editable: true)Zone (type: esriFieldTypeString, alias: Zone, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, length: 60, nullable: true, editable: true)F7_2SqMile (type: esriFieldTypeString, alias: F7_2SqMile, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, length: 10, nullable: true, editable: true)Shape_Leng (type: esriFieldTypeDouble, alias: Shape_Leng, SQL Type: sqlTypeOther, nullable: true, editable: true)PARKING*: parking adjacency OCCUPANCY*: occupied or not BuildingType* : building type TotalBusinessSpace*: available business space in this buildingNonEmptySpace*: non-empty business space in this buildingCHECK_* FOLLOWUP*: need followup or notGlobalID*PropmMana*: property manager Notes: field with * means it came from other source or field research done by Tian Xie in Aug, 2018

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 2022, Netflix was the most effective company, generating close to 2.47 million U.S. dollars of revenue per employee. Apple ranked in second place with an annual revenue of more than 2.40 million U.S. dollars per employee.

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.

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.

The tech industry had a rough start to 2024. Technology companies worldwide saw a significant reduction in their workforce in the first quarter of 2024, with over 57 thousand employees being laid off. By the second quarter, layoffs impacted more than 43 thousand tech employees. In the final quarter of the year around 12 thousand employees were laid off. Layoffs impacting all global tech giants Layoffs in the global market escalated dramatically in the first quarter of 2023, when the sector saw a staggering record high of 167.6 thousand employees losing their jobs. Major tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and IBM all contributed to this figure during this quarter. Amazon, in particular, conducted the most rounds of layoffs with the highest number of employees laid off among global tech giants. Industries most affected include the consumer, hardware, food, and healthcare sectors. Notable companies that have laid off a significant number of staff include Flink, Booking.com, Uber, PayPal, LinkedIn, and Peloton, among others. Overhiring led the trend, but will AI keep it going? Layoffs in the technology sector started following an overhiring spree during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, companies expanded their workforce to meet increased demand for digital services during lockdowns. However, as lockdowns ended, economic uncertainties persisted and companies reevaluated their strategies, layoffs became inevitable, resulting in a record number of 263 thousand laid off employees in the global tech sector by trhe end of 2022. Moreover, it is still unclear how advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) will impact layoff trends in the tech sector. AI-driven automation can replace manual tasks leading to workforce redundancies. Whether through chatbots handling customer inquiries or predictive algorithms optimizing supply chains, the pursuit of efficiency and cost savings may result in more tech industry layoffs in the future.

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.

With a market capitalization of 3.12 trillion U.S. dollars as of May 2024, Microsoft was the world’s largest company that year. Rounding out the top five were some of the world’s most recognizable brands: Apple, NVIDIA, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Amazon. Saudi Aramco led the ranking of the world's most profitable companies in 2023, with a pre-tax income of nearly 250 billion U.S. dollars. How are market value and market capitalization determined? Market value and market capitalization are two terms frequently used – and confused - when discussing the profitability and viability of companies. Strictly speaking, market capitalization (or market cap) is the worth of a company based on the total value of all their shares; an important metric when determining the comparative value of companies for trading opportunities. Accordingly, many stock exchanges such as the New York or London Stock Exchange release market capitalization data on their listed companies. On the other hand, market value technically refers to what a company is worth in a much broader context. It is determined by multiple factors, including profitability, corporate debt, and the market environment as a whole. In this sense it aims to estimate the overall value of a company, with share price only being one element. Market value is therefore useful for determining whether a company’s shares are over- or undervalued, and in arriving at a price if the company is to be sold. Such valuations are generally made on a case-by-case basis though, and not regularly reported. For this reason, market capitalization is often reported as market value. What are the top companies in the world? The answer to this question depends on the metric used. Although the largest company by market capitalization, Microsoft's global revenue did not manage to crack the top 20 companies. Rather, American multinational retailer Walmart was ranked as the largest company in the world by revenue. Walmart also had the highest number of employees in the world.

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.

The number of Facebook users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 12.6 million users (+5.04 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Facebook user base is estimated to reach 262.8 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Facebook users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here regarding the platform facebook, have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average monthly active users over the period and count multiple accounts by persons only once.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).

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.  

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.

As of March 3, 2025, Apple was the leading tech company by market capitalization globally at 3.62 trillion U.S. dollars. Nvidia ranked second at just over three trillion U.S. dollars, a figure that tumbled in January 2025 following the dramatic release and success of DeepSeek's AI model. The Chinese-made AI model jumped to the top of the Apple Store in late January, stunning investors, and sinking multiple tech stocks. Apple leads the pack Since its foundation in a Californian garage in 1976, Apple has expanded massively, becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world. The company started its origins in the PC industry with the Macintosh, but soon entered other segments of the consumer electronics market. Today, the iPhone is the most popular Apple product, although Mac, iPad, wearables, and services also contribute to its high revenues. Aiming at innovation, Apple invests every year in research and development, spanning a wide array of technologies from AI through to extended reality. Nvidia's immense growth With a focus that began with origins in gaming, Nvidia's business strategy has been transformed by demand from data centers that sit at the heart of the AI boom. The company's chips have been favored to support in the training and running of a range of large language models, most notably in the development of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Amazon spent the most on research and development in the fiscal year 2022, with over 73 billion U.S. dollars. Meta, Alphabet, Apple, and Huawei rounded out the top five of companies with the highest R&D spending that year.

Leading by innovation

Spending money on research and development, or R&D, is how a company innovates new technologies and conducts research to develop new products and services. R&D allows companies, such as Amazon, to stay ahead of their competition and work towards the future. Most of the R&D spending in the world is in 2021 was within health & pharma, which should be seen in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the United States is the leading country for R&D expenditure in the world.

AI and R&D

Currently, many companies are investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation, including the ethical implications of AI and how it can be used to better society as a whole. Major companies, such as Amazon and Alphabet, are throwing their collective weight into this issue and conducting research into its future applications.