Facebook Vs. Orkut: One Became Meta With A $1.6 Trillion Market Cap, The Other Was Shut Down By Google: Here's Why

Thirteen years after Facebook's IPO, its journey from a Harvard University dorm room to a $1.6 trillion behemoth underscores just how far it has come, especially when compared to early rival Orkut, which Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google shut down in 2014.

What Happened: Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc. META, went public on May 18, 2012, pricing shares at $38 each and raising over $16 billion.

The IPO valued the company at $104 billion, the largest ever at the time for a newly listed U.S. firm. The debut was rocky, but over the years, Facebook scaled rapidly through product innovation, strategic acquisitions like Instagram and a dominant ad business.

While Facebook soared, Orkut—a social media site launched just weeks before Facebook in January 2004 by a Turkish Google engineer named Orkut Büyükkökten—failed to gain global traction. Google officially shut it down in 2014.

Google officially shut down Orkut on Sept. 30, 2014, primarily because of its declining user base and slower growth compared to emerging social media giants like Facebook.

Despite enjoying strong popularity in countries such as India and Brazil, Orkut failed to achieve widespread adoption in key markets like the U.S.

On the other hand, Facebook succeeded where early social networks like Friendster, MySpace and Orkut failed by growing slowly, building reliable technology, learning from others' mistakes and mastering PR.

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Rather than chasing fast expansion, the Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook started with elite colleges, focused on user experience, and gradually scaled up, all while maintaining a clean interface and robust infrastructure.

It smartly incorporated competitors' best features (like with TikTok), built a powerful ad model based on user targeting and used public relations to manage controversies and user trust—an approach that helped transform it into a $1.6 trillion global tech giant.

Previously, Zuckerberg also acknowledged that Facebook wasn’t built on a groundbreaking concept, but rather evolved from existing ideas in the social networking space.

"It's not like they had a lack of talent. I mean, we were like a ragtag group of children, and they had serious engineers and serious infrastructure."

So why did Facebook succeed where tech giants stumbled?

"Large companies are slow. They lack conviction," Zuckerberg explained, suggesting that corporate hesitation held them back from fully embracing social networking.

"The reason is, people doubt new ideas before they come to fruition," he added. "The narrative with social networking was like, ‘Ah, it's just this college kid thing.'"

Why It's Important: Over the years, Facebook has faced multiple controversies, from privacy scandals like Beacon and Cambridge Analytica to criticism over misinformation and data practices.

Still, the company adapted, eventually rebranding as Meta in 2021 to reflect its metaverse ambitions.

Over the past five years, Meta shares have soared 205.33%, with a 36.06% gain over the last 12 months. Year-to-date, the stock is up 7.45%, according to Benzinga Pro.

Meta currently has a consensus price target of $704.19 based on ratings from 43 analysts. The highest target, $935, was issued by Tigress Financial on Feb. 11, 2025, while the lowest, $525, came from Scotiabank on April 21, 2025.

The three latest analyst ratings by RBC Capital, Morgan Stanley and JMP Securities indicate an average price target of $713.33, suggesting an 11.22% potential upside.

Meta holds a growth score of 76.06% in the Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings. Click here to see how it compares to other top tech stocks.