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GP ultimately says exactly the opposite - Zuckerberg may have had different plans for mobile to start with but he reacted swiftly. How can anyone say he “misse

GP ultimately says exactly the opposite - Zuckerberg may have had different plans for mobile to start with but he reacted swiftly. How can anyone say he “missed mobile” when he led the biggest mobile play of any software company in the world, leading to a dominant position today? Top analysts like Ben Thomson widely give him credit for it. If he says he “missed mobile” it’s possibly false humility and actual hubris, or he means something completely different.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I think the OP refers to Facebook waiting really long to offer a mobile app. Many others jumped into the gap (I personally used an app called "Friendly for Facebook"). They were indeed really slow to recognise mobile as a worthwhile platform. So long that it would have jeopardised their position if it hadn't already been pretty much invincible.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  They released a dedicated iOS app on the same month the App Store launched (July 2008), about a year after the first iPhone was launched. They had m.facebook.com (dedicated mobile site) in time for the iPhone launch (Remember when Steve Jobs said web apps were the future? I remember!) Messenger as a standalone app was released in 2011. They bought Instagram pretty much within two years of birth. The UX of a lot of the mobile products might not have been good - I don’t remember - but all things considered I would say they moved fast on mobile, at both the engineering and strategic levels, and it paid dividends.
erik 5y ago
My take when he says he "missed mobile" is that he regrets that Facebook doesn't own the platform. Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp are enormously successful apps, but because Apple & Google own the OS, they are vulnerable. Apple's introduction of App Tracking Transparency and the way Facebook have struggled against this show the nature of their postion.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  Google bought Android in 2005, the iPhone was released in 2007, and other important companies (Microsoft, BlackBerry, Nokia) were also doing phone plays which would later fail. Facebook was still in its infancy as an internet company back then and I doubt they would’ve been able to carry out a hardware or OS play without extremely diluting its focus. But sure, if they had done so and succeeded despite the minimal odds they would be in a totally dominant position right now.
rchaud 5y ago
"Missed mobile" might be reference to creating a device-oriented FB moat, the infamous HTC Cha Cha from 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_ChaCha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_ChaCha

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I think the OP refers to Facebook waiting really long to offer a mobile app. Many others jumped into the gap (I personally used an app called "Friendly for Facebook"). They were indeed really slow to recognise mobile as a worthwhile platform. So long that it would have jeopardised their position if it hadn't already been pretty much invincible.

arcturus17 5y ago
They released a dedicated iOS app on the same month the App Store launched (July 2008), about a year after the first iPhone was launched. They had m.facebook.com (dedicated mobile site) in time for the iPhone launch (Remember when Steve Jobs said web apps were the future? I remember!) Messenger as a standalone app was released in 2011. They bought Instagram pretty much within two years of birth. The UX of a lot of the mobile products might not have been good - I don’t remember - but all things considered I would say they moved fast on mobile, at both the engineering and strategic levels, and it paid dividends.

erik 5y ago

My take when he says he "missed mobile" is that he regrets that Facebook doesn't own the platform. Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp are enormously successful apps, but because Apple & Google own the OS, they are vulnerable. Apple's introduction of App Tracking Transparency and the way Facebook have struggled against this show the nature of their postion.

arcturus17 5y ago
Google bought Android in 2005, the iPhone was released in 2007, and other important companies (Microsoft, BlackBerry, Nokia) were also doing phone plays which would later fail. Facebook was still in its infancy as an internet company back then and I doubt they would’ve been able to carry out a hardware or OS play without extremely diluting its focus. But sure, if they had done so and succeeded despite the minimal odds they would be in a totally dominant position right now.

rchaud 5y ago

"Missed mobile" might be reference to creating a device-oriented FB moat, the infamous HTC Cha Cha from 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_ChaCha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_ChaCha