A shoe brand in Bengaluru posts a new design on Instagram. It pays Meta to show the post to people in their twenties who like running. A shopper sees it, taps "Message", and asks about sizes on WhatsApp. The brand's chatbot replies and takes the order. The post, the ad, the targeting and the chat all ran on Meta's software.
One sale, step by step: a brand posts on Instagram, pays for an ad shown to the people it chooses, a shopper asks about sizes on WhatsApp, and the brand's chatbot takes the order. The post, the ad, the targeting and the chat all run on Meta's software.
Meta was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook, a social network for students at Harvard University. It is based in Menlo Park, California. It bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. In 2021 the company renamed itself Meta, but Facebook is still one of its apps.
India matters more to Meta than almost any other country. More people use WhatsApp in India than anywhere else, and the same is true of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta's first office in India opened in Hyderabad in 2010. It now has offices in several Indian cities, including Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Gurugram and Mumbai. Much of its work in India is with its users, advertisers and businesses. Its engineering team in India is smaller than those of the other four big tech companies.
Every name listed here has posted software engineering jobs in India.
What Meta sells, and to whom
Meta's apps are free for the people who use them. Almost all of Meta's money comes from advertising. Businesses pay Meta to show their ads to people on Facebook and Instagram. Meta's apps learn what each person is interested in, so a business can choose who sees its ad.
Meta earns smaller amounts in a few other ways:
WhatsApp Businesscompanies pay to send messages to their customers on WhatsApp, such as order updates, reminders and offers
devicesQuest virtual-reality headsets, and smart glasses made with Ray-Ban
Meta's products fall into a few families:
The appsFacebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads
The ad systemsthat decide which ad each person sees
Reality Labswhich builds Meta's headsets and glasses
AILlama, Meta's own AI models, which other companies can download and use, and Meta AI, an assistant built into its apps
What it builds in India
Meta's engineers in India work on parts of its apps and the business tools around them. WhatsApp's payments feature was launched first in India. India is also one of the largest markets for WhatsApp's business tools.
Keeping billions of people safe on these apps is a large job of its own. It is called trust and safety. Meta builds software that finds harmful posts, fake accounts and scams. Much of the reviewing of posts by people is done by outside firms that Meta hires. (More on it in Company Tier 10, BPO and KPO firms, in the services-world collection.)
Meta's software finds harmful posts, fake accounts and scams on its apps, and sends posts on to people who review them. Much of that reviewing is done by outside firms that Meta hires.
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Where its products are explained
Some of what Meta makes is also made by other companies. The product-companies collection explains how each kind of product works, through those companies:
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as social appsMarket Segment 33.6, Social media, dating and matrimony apps, in Industry Vertical 33, News, publishing and social media.
Businesses selling over WhatsAppMarket Segment 13.2, WhatsApp marketing and conversational commerce platforms, in Industry Vertical 13, Martech.
Meta's adsMarket Segment 34.1, Ad buying platforms (DSPs) and ad networks, in Industry Vertical 34, Adtech.
Trust and safetyMarket Segment 4.15, Physical security, surveillance and trust and safety, in Industry Vertical 4, Cybersecurity.
LlamaMarket Segment 9.1, Foundation model companies, in Industry Vertical 9, AI labs and model platforms.
The names it hires under
Meta hires in India under one name:
Metathe company's own name
AI that anyone can download.
Most AI companies keep their best models to themselves. Meta took a different path with Llama, releasing its models for others to download and build on. Many companies, including Indian start-ups, have built their own AI products on Llama. Meta is also putting its AI assistant, Meta AI, inside WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
That is Meta: free apps paid for by advertising, with India as one of its biggest markets.