Facebook

Product brand

A global social networking service owned and operated by Meta Platforms.

Last updated October 18, 2026

Overview

Facebook is a global social networking service and one of the best-known digital platforms operated by Meta Platforms. It began in February 2004 as TheFacebook, a directory and networking site for Harvard students, and gradually expanded to universities across the United States and Canada before opening registration more broadly in 2006. The name refers to printed or electronic student directories, commonly called face books, that pair photographs with personal information. The service allows people to create profiles, connect with other users as friends or followers, publish text, photographs, video and links, exchange messages through Messenger, participate in interest-based groups, follow public Pages, organize events and buy or sell goods through Marketplace. Users can apply different visibility settings to posts and profiles, although privacy controls and the company’s handling of personal information have remained subjects of sustained public scrutiny. News Feed became the central mechanism for ranking and displaying activity from friends, Pages, groups and advertisers, while later features such as Timeline, Stories, live video, Reels and recommendation systems broadened the product beyond a simple personal directory. Facebook’s business model is principally based on advertising. Brands, publishers, public figures and small businesses can create Pages and purchase targeted advertising designed to reach users according to characteristics, interests, activity and inferred preferences. The platform’s enormous audience, social graph and measurement systems made it a major channel for digital marketing. In December 2023, the service reported approximately 3.07 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to the referenced Wikipedia material. Its growth was supported by product development, mobile distribution and acquisitions by the parent company. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp and Oculus VR in 2014, although those brands remain distinct services. In October 2021, Facebook’s corporate parent changed its name from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms, signaling a broader strategic emphasis on virtual and augmented reality and the metaverse. The Facebook service itself continued under its established name and remained a major part of Meta’s family of applications. Facebook has also become an important social and political infrastructure. It has been used for community organizing, news distribution, commercial communication, emergency information and political campaigning. At the same time, critics, regulators and researchers have linked the platform to privacy violations, misinformation, political manipulation, hate speech, harassment, harmful content, possible effects on well-being and the amplification of ethnic violence. The Cambridge Analytica controversy in 2018 intensified global examination of its data practices and governance. Facebook’s scale gives product-ranking and moderation decisions consequences well beyond ordinary consumer software, making trust, safety, privacy and regulation central parts of its brand identity.

History

Facebook emerged from the university social-networking culture of the early 2000s. While studying at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash in 2003, a short-lived site that compared students’ photographs. In January 2004 he began building a more structured online directory, and on February 4 launched TheFacebook with Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The initial service drew on the idea of a face book: a student directory containing names, photographs and other identifying information. Membership first spread within Harvard and then to other universities in the United States and Canada. Sean Parker became president in 2004, and the company moved to Palo Alto. Peter Thiel provided an early investment. In 2005, the business removed “The” from its name and secured the Facebook.com domain. The following year, registration expanded beyond educational institutions to people aged at least 13 with a valid email address, subject to certain local age exceptions. The platform’s growth was driven by a combination of network effects, a recognizable identity system, a stream of continuously updated activity and increasingly sophisticated advertising. News Feed, introduced in the early expansion period, became the principal interface for discovering friends’ activity, Pages, groups and media. Timeline later organized a user’s posts and life events chronologically. Facebook also introduced Pages for organizations and public figures, photo tagging, usernames, groups, events, video, live broadcasting and temporary Stories. Messenger developed into a distinct but closely connected messaging product, while Marketplace added peer-to-peer commerce. Facebook’s mobile expansion transformed the service from a desktop website into an always-connected communications platform. Its advertising systems used extensive behavioral and social signals to help marketers target and measure campaigns. The company also pursued acquisitions that widened its ecosystem, notably Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp and Oculus VR in 2014. In 2012, Facebook completed a major public offering, becoming one of the most prominent listed internet companies of its generation. Scale brought increasingly complex governance challenges. The service was used for political mobilization and civic communication, including during movements associated with the Arab Spring, but it was also criticized for misinformation, coordinated manipulation, hate speech, privacy failures and the circulation of harmful material. Questions about Facebook’s role in Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis illustrated the potential consequences of platform design and moderation decisions in fragile political environments. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 became a defining privacy crisis, prompting hearings, regulatory attention and changes to data-access policies. In 2021, Facebook’s corporate parent adopted the name Meta Platforms to reflect a strategy focused on a broader family of services and long-term investment in virtual and augmented reality. The Facebook brand was not discontinued. It remains a worldwide social networking service offering profiles, feeds, communities, messaging connections, media publishing, advertising and commerce tools. Its continuing significance rests on both its vast user base and its role as infrastructure for social, commercial and political communication.

2021
Corporate rebrand to Meta
[3]Meta Platformsen.wikipedia.org
The parent company becomes Meta Platforms while Facebook remains a consumer product brand.
2014
WhatsApp and Oculus acquisitions
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
The company expands into global messaging and virtual reality through major acquisitions.
2012
Instagram acquisition
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Facebook acquires Instagram, strengthening its position in mobile visual social media.
2006
General registration opens
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
People outside participating universities can register subject to age and email requirements.
2006
News Feed becomes central to the product
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Facebook introduces an activity feed that aggregates updates from friends and followed entities.
2005
The name becomes Facebook
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
The company removes “The” from its name and obtains the Facebook.com domain.
2004
TheFacebook launches at Harvard
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
The service begins as a Harvard-only social directory and expands to additional universities during the year.

Products and positioning

A mass-market global social network centered on personal connection, community participation, content sharing and advertiser-supported communication.

Social networking · 2004
Facebook social network
The core service provides personal profiles, friend and follower connections, News Feed recommendations, public and private publishing, photo and video sharing, notifications and interactions such as reactions and comments. Users can control the intended audience for many forms of content, while algorithmic ranking determines much of what appears in the main feed.
Public presence and marketing · 2007
Facebook Pages
Pages give businesses, organizations, public figures and media publishers a public identity separate from an individual profile. They support posts, audience engagement, messaging, events, analytics and paid promotion, making them a core connection between Facebook’s community layer and its advertising business.
Online communities
Facebook Groups
Groups organize discussions and content around shared interests, locations, institutions or activities. Administrators can establish membership and posting rules, and groups may be public, private or otherwise restricted. They support community coordination but have also been used to circulate misinformation and extremist or harmful content.
Social commerce
Facebook Marketplace
Marketplace allows users to list, discover and negotiate the sale or exchange of goods. It extends Facebook beyond communication into local and peer-to-peer commerce, with discovery shaped by location and platform recommendations.
Short-form video · 2017
Facebook Stories and Reels
Stories provide temporary photo and video posts that generally disappear after 24 hours, while Reels focuses on short-form video discovery. These formats helped Facebook respond to changes in audience behavior and competition from Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.
Messaging · 2011
Facebook Messenger
Messenger is Facebook’s associated messaging service for direct conversations, group chats, media sharing and calls. It became increasingly distinct from the main Facebook application while remaining connected to Facebook identities, contacts and business communication tools.

Controversies

2026
Meta's Oversight Board orders the company to remove deepfake videos from Facebook
Meta's Oversight Board has ordered the company to remove deepfake videos from Facebook. The decision, reported as a controversy note, concerns the platform's handling of manipulated media. The Oversight Board's order directs Meta to take down the deepfake videos from Facebook. No further details about the specific videos, the parties involved, or the outcome of the removal were provided in the source.
Source
2026
Bank Leumi sues Meta over scam ads
Bank Leumi filed a lawsuit against Meta in Tel Aviv District Court, seeking NIS 26.6 million. The bank alleges that fraudulent advertisements impersonating it on Facebook and Instagram are used to steal customers' sensitive information and access their accounts. It further claims that Meta's screening and monitoring systems are insufficient to detect and prevent these scams.
Source
2026
New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567 million
A New Mexico court ordered Meta Platforms to pay $567 million over alleged harms to young users on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The order followed a March jury verdict finding that Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed information related to child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
Source
2026
New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567 million and change youth-safety measures
A New Mexico judge ruled that Meta created a public nuisance and ordered it to pay $567 million into an abatement fund and implement youth-safety measures for Facebook and Instagram in the state. The court found that WhatsApp was not a contributing cause of the public nuisance and did not subject it to the same orders. Meta said it disagreed with the ruling and would appeal.
Source
2026
Bank Leumi sues Meta for NIS 26.6 million over scam ads
Bank Leumi filed a NIS 26.6 million lawsuit against Meta in Tel Aviv District Court, alleging that fraudulent advertisements impersonating the bank on Facebook and Instagram are used to steal customers' sensitive information and access their accounts, and that Meta's screening and monitoring systems are insufficient to detect and prevent the scams.
Source
2019
Libra Association signs 21 charter members
The Libra Association signed 21 charter members at its inaugural meeting in Geneva, advancing Facebook's Libra digital-currency project. Facebook was involved in the project, and the association said Libra would not begin trading or accepting deposits until regulatory concerns were addressed.
Source
2019
Current sues Facebook over Calibra logo
Current filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging trademark infringement over the Calibra logo. The suit also names Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary that owns IP related to Calibra, and design agency Character as defendants; the article reports allegations, not a court determination.
Source
2019
Attorneys general expand antitrust investigation into Facebook
In October 2019, New York Attorney General Leticia James announced that 39 additional states had joined an antitrust investigation into Facebook. According to the announcement, the expansion brought the effort's support to 47 attorneys general from states and the District of Columbia. The event is recorded as a controversy note in the brand's wiki, reflecting the widening of the multistate antitrust scrutiny of Facebook at that time.
Source
2019
Facebook announced political-ad policy and misinformation safeguards
Facebook announced updates to its political-ad practices ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, including greater transparency in its ad library, a candidate ad-spend tracker, and measures to label state-controlled media and content rated false or partly false by third-party fact-checkers. It also introduced Facebook Protect to help secure accounts of candidates, elected officials and their teams.
Source
2019
Libra Association responds to regulatory concerns
In a controversy note concerning Facebook, the Libra Association stated that it was working with regulators to address concerns about how the Libra system would comply with anti-money-laundering requirements. The association's statement was a response to regulatory concerns regarding the Libra system's compliance with anti-money-laundering rules. The note records the association's stated position that it was cooperating with regulators on this matter.
Source

Marketing campaigns

2015Instant Articles
Worldwide
Facebook worked with major news organizations to publish fast-loading articles directly inside the News Feed.
Outcome. The initiative positioned Facebook as a distribution intermediary for publishers, although publisher-platform economics and control remained contentious.
Source
2007Facebook Pages
Worldwide
Facebook introduced Pages as a structured way for brands, organizations and public figures to build audiences and communicate through the platform.
Outcome. Pages became a foundational product for organic audience-building, customer communication and advertising.
Source

Brand decisions

2021
Parent company rebrand to MetaStrategy
Background
The company sought to communicate a strategy extending beyond social networking into virtual and augmented reality.
Action taken
Facebook, Inc. changed its corporate identity to Meta Platforms while retaining Facebook as a product brand.
Aftermath
Facebook continued operating within Meta’s broader family of applications and technology businesses.
Source
2006
Open registration beyond universitiesStrategy
Background
The service had grown through controlled expansion across colleges and universities.
Action taken
Facebook opened registration to a much broader public subject to minimum-age and email requirements.
Aftermath
The decision accelerated worldwide network effects and transformed Facebook from a student network into a general social platform.
Source

Recent events

2021
Facebook parent rebrands as Meta[3]Meta Platformsen.wikipedia.org
Other
Facebook, Inc. changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms while retaining Facebook as a major consumer service.
2012
Facebook acquires Instagram[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
M&A
The acquisition expanded Facebook’s position in mobile photo sharing and social media.
2006
Facebook opens registration beyond universities[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Product launch
The service opened to people meeting its minimum-age and valid-email requirements, substantially broadening its addressable audience.
2005
Facebook drops “The” from its name[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Other
The company adopted the shorter Facebook name after obtaining the Facebook.com domain.
2004
Facebook launches as TheFacebook for Harvard students[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Product launch
Mark Zuckerberg and fellow students launched the service with membership initially limited to Harvard College.

Sources178 sources

Cite this profile: Cite the canonical profile. /brand-wiki/facebook · Editorial policy · How profiles are compiled

Facebook

Product brand

Unclaimed

A global social networking service owned and operated by Meta Platforms.

Last updated October 18, 2026

Overview

History

2021
Corporate rebrand to Meta
[3]Meta Platformsen.wikipedia.org
The parent company becomes Meta Platforms while Facebook remains a consumer product brand.
2014
WhatsApp and Oculus acquisitions
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
The company expands into global messaging and virtual reality through major acquisitions.
2012
Instagram acquisition
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Facebook acquires Instagram, strengthening its position in mobile visual social media.
2006
General registration opens
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
People outside participating universities can register subject to age and email requirements.
2006
News Feed becomes central to the product
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Facebook introduces an activity feed that aggregates updates from friends and followed entities.
2005
The name becomes Facebook
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
The company removes “The” from its name and obtains the Facebook.com domain.
2004
TheFacebook launches at Harvard
[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
The service begins as a Harvard-only social directory and expands to additional universities during the year.

Products and positioning

A mass-market global social network centered on personal connection, community participation, content sharing and advertiser-supported communication.

Social networking · 2004
Facebook social network
The core service provides personal profiles, friend and follower connections, News Feed recommendations, public and private publishing, photo and video sharing, notifications and interactions such as reactions and comments. Users can control the intended audience for many forms of content, while algorithmic ranking determines much of what appears in the main feed.
Public presence and marketing · 2007
Facebook Pages
Pages give businesses, organizations, public figures and media publishers a public identity separate from an individual profile. They support posts, audience engagement, messaging, events, analytics and paid promotion, making them a core connection between Facebook’s community layer and its advertising business.
Online communities
Facebook Groups
Groups organize discussions and content around shared interests, locations, institutions or activities. Administrators can establish membership and posting rules, and groups may be public, private or otherwise restricted. They support community coordination but have also been used to circulate misinformation and extremist or harmful content.
Social commerce
Facebook Marketplace
Marketplace allows users to list, discover and negotiate the sale or exchange of goods. It extends Facebook beyond communication into local and peer-to-peer commerce, with discovery shaped by location and platform recommendations.
Short-form video · 2017
Facebook Stories and Reels
Stories provide temporary photo and video posts that generally disappear after 24 hours, while Reels focuses on short-form video discovery. These formats helped Facebook respond to changes in audience behavior and competition from Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.
Messaging · 2011
Facebook Messenger
Messenger is Facebook’s associated messaging service for direct conversations, group chats, media sharing and calls. It became increasingly distinct from the main Facebook application while remaining connected to Facebook identities, contacts and business communication tools.

Controversies

2026
Meta's Oversight Board orders the company to remove deepfake videos from Facebook
Meta's Oversight Board has ordered the company to remove deepfake videos from Facebook. The decision, reported as a controversy note, concerns the platform's handling of manipulated media. The Oversight Board's order directs Meta to take down the deepfake videos from Facebook. No further details about the specific videos, the parties involved, or the outcome of the removal were provided in the source.
Source
2026
Bank Leumi sues Meta over scam ads
Bank Leumi filed a lawsuit against Meta in Tel Aviv District Court, seeking NIS 26.6 million. The bank alleges that fraudulent advertisements impersonating it on Facebook and Instagram are used to steal customers' sensitive information and access their accounts. It further claims that Meta's screening and monitoring systems are insufficient to detect and prevent these scams.
Source
2026
New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567 million
A New Mexico court ordered Meta Platforms to pay $567 million over alleged harms to young users on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The order followed a March jury verdict finding that Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed information related to child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
Source
2026
New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567 million and change youth-safety measures
A New Mexico judge ruled that Meta created a public nuisance and ordered it to pay $567 million into an abatement fund and implement youth-safety measures for Facebook and Instagram in the state. The court found that WhatsApp was not a contributing cause of the public nuisance and did not subject it to the same orders. Meta said it disagreed with the ruling and would appeal.
Source
2026
Bank Leumi sues Meta for NIS 26.6 million over scam ads
Bank Leumi filed a NIS 26.6 million lawsuit against Meta in Tel Aviv District Court, alleging that fraudulent advertisements impersonating the bank on Facebook and Instagram are used to steal customers' sensitive information and access their accounts, and that Meta's screening and monitoring systems are insufficient to detect and prevent the scams.
Source
2019
Libra Association signs 21 charter members
The Libra Association signed 21 charter members at its inaugural meeting in Geneva, advancing Facebook's Libra digital-currency project. Facebook was involved in the project, and the association said Libra would not begin trading or accepting deposits until regulatory concerns were addressed.
Source
2019
Current sues Facebook over Calibra logo
Current filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging trademark infringement over the Calibra logo. The suit also names Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary that owns IP related to Calibra, and design agency Character as defendants; the article reports allegations, not a court determination.
Source
2019
Attorneys general expand antitrust investigation into Facebook
In October 2019, New York Attorney General Leticia James announced that 39 additional states had joined an antitrust investigation into Facebook. According to the announcement, the expansion brought the effort's support to 47 attorneys general from states and the District of Columbia. The event is recorded as a controversy note in the brand's wiki, reflecting the widening of the multistate antitrust scrutiny of Facebook at that time.
Source
2019
Facebook announced political-ad policy and misinformation safeguards
Facebook announced updates to its political-ad practices ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, including greater transparency in its ad library, a candidate ad-spend tracker, and measures to label state-controlled media and content rated false or partly false by third-party fact-checkers. It also introduced Facebook Protect to help secure accounts of candidates, elected officials and their teams.
Source
2019
Libra Association responds to regulatory concerns
In a controversy note concerning Facebook, the Libra Association stated that it was working with regulators to address concerns about how the Libra system would comply with anti-money-laundering requirements. The association's statement was a response to regulatory concerns regarding the Libra system's compliance with anti-money-laundering rules. The note records the association's stated position that it was cooperating with regulators on this matter.
Source

Marketing campaigns

2015Instant Articles
Worldwide
Facebook worked with major news organizations to publish fast-loading articles directly inside the News Feed.
Outcome. The initiative positioned Facebook as a distribution intermediary for publishers, although publisher-platform economics and control remained contentious.
Source
2007Facebook Pages
Worldwide
Facebook introduced Pages as a structured way for brands, organizations and public figures to build audiences and communicate through the platform.
Outcome. Pages became a foundational product for organic audience-building, customer communication and advertising.
Source

Brand decisions

2021
Parent company rebrand to MetaStrategy
Background
The company sought to communicate a strategy extending beyond social networking into virtual and augmented reality.
Action taken
Facebook, Inc. changed its corporate identity to Meta Platforms while retaining Facebook as a product brand.
Aftermath
Facebook continued operating within Meta’s broader family of applications and technology businesses.
Source
2006
Open registration beyond universitiesStrategy
Background
The service had grown through controlled expansion across colleges and universities.
Action taken
Facebook opened registration to a much broader public subject to minimum-age and email requirements.
Aftermath
The decision accelerated worldwide network effects and transformed Facebook from a student network into a general social platform.
Source

Recent events

2021
Facebook parent rebrands as Meta[3]Meta Platformsen.wikipedia.org
Other
Facebook, Inc. changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms while retaining Facebook as a major consumer service.
2012
Facebook acquires Instagram[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
M&A
The acquisition expanded Facebook’s position in mobile photo sharing and social media.
2006
Facebook opens registration beyond universities[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Product launch
The service opened to people meeting its minimum-age and valid-email requirements, substantially broadening its addressable audience.
2005
Facebook drops “The” from its name[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Other
The company adopted the shorter Facebook name after obtaining the Facebook.com domain.
2004
Facebook launches as TheFacebook for Harvard students[1]Facebooken.wikipedia.org
Product launch
Mark Zuckerberg and fellow students launched the service with membership initially limited to Harvard College.

Sources178 sources

Cite this profile: Cite the canonical profile. /brand-wiki/facebook · Editorial policy · How profiles are compiled

Overview

History

Products and positioning

Controversies

Marketing campaigns

Brand decisions

Recent events

Related entries

Sources178 sources

Overview

History

Products and positioning

Controversies

Marketing campaigns

Brand decisions

Recent events

Related entries

Sources178 sources