Meta - Future Forum - UK Innovation Forum & Global Events

HOW META LEFT ITS LANE

From social platforms and messaging to AI and smart glasses, Meta now operates far beyond the feed.

Meta’s story began with Facebook, built around a simple idea: helping people connect online.

Two decades later, Facebook sits alongside Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger in a family of apps used by billions of people every day. But the more interesting shift is what has grown around them.

Meta has moved from software into the physical world through AI glasses, working with established eyewear brands to put cameras, audio and artificial intelligence into something people already wear. It has turned messaging into infrastructure for businesses, with WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram increasingly used to discover, speak to and buy from companies. And behind both sits a much bigger investment in AI and the computing power needed to make it work.

Those moves take Meta into very different industries – fashion and eyewear, retail and commerce, artificial intelligence and infrastructure – without abandoning the original question of how people connect.

Meta has not so much left social technology behind as made the lane considerably wider. What began with connecting people to one another now stretches into how we interact with businesses, with technology and increasingly with the world around us.

Podcasts

Tomorrow Ep. 25 September 18, 2026

The Future Needs Human Connection | Martina McDonnell on Marketing, Creativity & Connection

What happens to marketing when AI can translate, create and optimise at a scale we’ve never seen before? In this episode of Tomorrow, the Future Forum, Oli Barrett MBE speaks with Martina McDonnell, International Marketing Director at Meta, about the future of marketing, AI, global brands, creators, cultural relevance and…