Meta’s latest app Threads went live in the UK at midnight last night, reportedly welcoming 10 million users in seven hours.
The app many have likened to Twitter allows users to post up to 500 characters of text, and up to five minutes of videos, pictures, and links.
Check out our guide on how to use Threads for more tips for getting started with the new app.
Threads has added yet another feather to Meta’s cap, with the company now managing a number of the biggest apps in the world.
But who owns Meta and which apps belong to the parent company? Here is everything we know.
Who owns Meta?
Meta Platforms Inc, which used to be called Facebook Inc, is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, who acts as the company’s chief executive officer and chairman.
There are also other shareholders who make key decisions for Meta and the apps it owns.
Meta is one of the world’s most valuable companies and is considered to be one of the Big Five American IT companies alongside Google’s parent company Alphabet, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
What apps does Meta own?
Meta’s journey started with Facebook, but over the decades the company evolved to create and buy a number of other apps that connect people across the globe.
Here are the apps owned by Meta as of 2023.
Threads
Mark Zuckerberg has defined Threads as a “public conversation app”, sharing his hopes for it to welcome more than a billion people on it eventually.
Zuckerberg added: “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully, we will.”
The app was launched in the UK on July 6, 2023.
The beloved photo- and video-sharing platform, Instagram, was founded back in 2010.
After reaching astronomical success, the company’s owners sold it to Facebook Inc for $1 billion (£785 million) in cash and stock on April 9, 2012.
Facebook, the social media platform that started it all for Meta, was created in 2004 by Zuckerberg and his friends from Harvard.
It launched to the public in 2006 and today it has billions of monthly active users across the globe as the third-most-visited website.
Messenger
Messenger, the instant messaging app that many have come to know via Facebook, was originally called Facebook Chat when it was introduced in 2008.
The company revamped it in the following years and eventually made it a stand-alone app in 2015.
WhatsApp, the free instant messaging service, was founded by two former employees of Yahoo!, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, back in 2009.
By 2011, the app had become one of the top 20 apps in the US Apple App Store, and by 2013 it had nearly 200 million active users.
The app was sold to Facebook Inc, now known as Meta, in 2014 for $19 billion (£14.9 billion).
Workplace
Workplace is software specifically designed for businesses. It allows a company’s staff to stay in touch via instant messaging, video conferences, posts, and more.
It was developed by Meta Platforms back in 2015, with its beta format launching in 2016.
