Since gaining notoriety with “FaceSmash,” built in a week in a college dorm room at Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg’s now famous motto of “move fast and break things” was a prime directive during the early days of the creation of Facebook. With a reach of 2.9 billion monthly active users, it is now the most popular social media platform in the world. Over time, the firm expanded its portfolio of social media apps, messaging services, and hardware solutions and in October 2021, rebranded itself as Meta. 

While Meta’s motto has evolved, it is an apt way to describe Meta’s approach to innovation, with the firm showing a keen willingness to take a risk and develop an emerging trend. This has led Meta to dabble in, amongst other things, a smartwatch, a video phone, a podcasting service, and even a virtual currency. While some of these ideas have fallen by the wayside, other bets like adding the “like” button on Facebook, recognizing the potential of messaging services in online commerce, and being an early proponent of the metaverse, with its experiments with virtual reality (VR) headsets, has led Meta to define and dominate social media and entertainment.