Facebook (FB), the social networking website started by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, has evolved into a huge company. After becoming profitable in 2010, it had its IPO in 2012. The company has a market cap of over $176 billion and an earnings-per-share in 2014 of $1.10. Since its founding, Facebook has purchased many different companies, the most famous of which were Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Let’s take a look at the top 11 companies that Facebook has acquired over the years.

1. Facebook (FB), the social networking
website started by Mark Zuckerberg in
2004, has evolved into a huge company.
After becoming profitable in 2010, it had
its IPO in 2012. The company has a
market cap of over $176 billion and an
earnings-per-share in 2014 of $1.10.
Since its founding, Facebook has
purchased many different companies, the
most famous of which were Instagram in
2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Let’s take a
look at the top 11 companies that
Facebook has acquired over the years.

2.  As a young technology company, Facebook needed to stay
innovative and continue developing products and services
that its clientele didn’t know they needed. Most people
don’t remember a Facebook without the “like” button or the
newsfeed but, before borrowing these technologies from
FriendFeed, Facebook was just a place you went to
individually check out each of your friends' profiles. This
acquisition also resulted in new employees for Facebook,
including some ex-Google (GOOG) staff members.
 Facebook also acquired both Karma and face.com to
improve its social networking service. Karma was a gift-
giving service that has since been used to develop
Facebook Gifts, and face.com had technology that
Facebook now uses to recognize faces and find your
friends whenever you upload new pictures.

3.  acebook wouldn’t be what it is today without the
software engineers who challenge themselves to
create new technologies. Starting in 2007, Facebook
began to snap up companies that employed talent that
they wanted. FriendFeed, as mentioned above, is one
example of this strategy.
 Nextstop, Drop.io, and Hot Potato are some of the
better known companies that Facebook has
purchased for their employees and quickly shut down.
Nextstop was a site that used social recommendations
to increase users’ travel experiences, Drop.io was a
file exchange service similar to DropBox, and Hot
Potato was a site that allowed users could “check-in”
to a place or event.

4.  Social networking sites these days absolutely must have mobile
platforms. When Facebook was first founded, however, most people
didn’t have cell phones, and those who did certainly weren’t using them
to check Facebook. Perhaps because of its beginnings, people didn’t
consider Facebook to be a mobile company. Now people use the
Facebook app but, until recently, the company was still primarily known
for its website.
 That all changed in 2012 when Facebook paid an astounding $1 billion
to acquire Instagram. The Instagram acquisition let investors know that
Facebook understood where the market was headed and was prepared
to pay money to stay relevant to its clientele.
 Next, in 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. WhatsApp is
a social messaging service that enables users from all over the world to
send free messages to one another over wifi or data connection. These
two purchases might not seem profitable on the surface but they are
immensely valuable to Facebook in terms of personal data and as proof
that the company is staying on the edge of technology.

5.  Now that Facebook has entered its mature phase, management
needs to find new ways to make money. Facebook’s strategy to
grow earnings is through diversification. Since 2014, Facebook
has made acquisitions that are far outside the realm of what
you’d expect a social networking company to buy. For example,
in 2014 Facebook bought Oculus VR, Ascenta, and ProtoGeo
Oy. Oculus VR, perhaps the most interesting of the acquisitions,
is a company that produces virtual reality headsets. Ascenta is a
drone-maker that Facebook plans to use to bring the internet to
remote places of the world. And finally, ProtoGeo Oy will be used
to help Facebook enter the fitness and health monitoring market.
Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
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