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In 2005, Facebook bought Facebook.com for $200,000.
The purchase gave the year-old startup control of a domain name that matched its brand.
At the time, Facebook served only college students, but the domain acquisition prevented potential copycats from exploiting Facebook's growing visibility.
In 2010, Facebook acquired Octazen Solutions, a startup that built contact importing tools for social networks.
Facebook integrated Octazen's technology to help users find and connect with their existing contacts on the platform.
At the time, Facebook led the social media landscape with hundreds of millions of users, but faced pressure from competitors working to simplify their own platforms.
The Octazen acquisition let Facebook streamline its contact importing process, making it easier for users to build their networks.
In April 2010, Facebook acquired Divvyshot, a startup that built collaborative photo galleries.
The purchase strengthened Facebook's photo-sharing features as it competed with platforms like MySpace.
Divvyshot's technology let users create and curate group photo collections—a capability that aligned with Facebook's focus on social connections through images.
In 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion plus $700 million in stock grants.
The deal let Facebook integrate Instagram's photo features with its massive user base while applying its advertising model to monetize Instagram's growing audience.
In 2013, Facebook shifted its acquisition strategy.
Rather than buying Storylane's story-sharing app, Facebook hired only the startup's development team.
In 2013, Facebook acquired Onavo, a mobile analytics company, for $120 million.
Onavo's technology tracked how users interacted with mobile apps and measured their data usage.
It helped Facebook monitor emerging competitors and improved its advertising precision.
The purchase came at a crucial time when users were shifting from desktop to mobile devices.
Through Onavo's data, Facebook gained direct visibility into which apps threatened its dominance and how users behaved on smartphones.
In 2014, WhatsApp threatened Facebook's dominance in social media, attracting 450 million active mobile users.
Facebook responded by buying WhatsApp for $19 billion!
The purchase gave Facebook direct control over WhatsApp's growing user base.
Facebook then integrated WhatsApp's messaging platform with its other apps while developing new advertising revenue streams.
In March 2014, Facebook acquired virtual reality startup Oculus VR for $2 billion.
The purchase gave Facebook ownership of the Oculus Rift headset, then the leading virtual reality device in development.
Facebook saw virtual reality as a potential new computing platform that could transform gaming and digital interaction.
For Oculus, founded just two years earlier, Facebook's resources offered a path to accelerate development and manufacturing.
In January 2015, Facebook acquired Wit.ai, an 18-month-old startup that built speech recognition tools for developers.
The purchase expanded Facebook's voice technology capabilities beyond its existing partnerships with speech recognition companies.
Wit.ai's platform enabled developers to create voice-controlled applications, adding conversational interfaces and analytics to Facebook's technical arsenal.
The purchase positioned Facebook to integrate voice commands across its applications, anticipating speech would join text and images as a primary mode of digital interaction.
In 2015, Facebook acquired QuickFire Networks in order to deliver high-quality video to billions of users without straining its infrastructure.
QuickFire's hardware compressed video files while preserving visual quality, enabling faster uploads and smoother streaming.
In 2018, Facebook bought Dreambit, an AI startup specializing in image recognition and visual search.
The acquisition aimed to help Facebook organize and search the billions of photos and videos users post daily.
Dreambit's machine learning technology could analyze images to identify content and patterns, enabling users to find specific visual content across Facebook's vast media archive.
In 2018, Facebook acquired Confirm.io, a startup specializing in biometric authentication.
Confirm.io's technology verified users' real-world identities through facial recognition.
Facebook had previously tested optional identity verification features but saw low user adoption.
The acquisition gave Facebook access to Confirm.io's patented system for verifying authentic user accounts across its platforms.
This purchase aimed to combat fake accounts and misinformation by linking digital profiles to confirmed identities.
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