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> Look at Instagram and Whatsapp, perfectly timed investments. What do you mean perfectly timed? If you mean that those platforms shot up in usage/revenue/what

by hbn 5y ago

> Look at Instagram and Whatsapp, perfectly timed investments. What do you mean perfectly timed? If you mean that those platforms shot up in usage/revenue/whatever-metric after their purchase, couldn't that be heavily influenced by the purchase? Neither of those were some small little platform with a groundbreaking new feature before that. Everyone I knew (in highschool at the time) had gotten sick of their parents all joining Facebook and making it uncool, so they moved to Instagram before the purchase. All that Zuck did was notice the platform all the kids are migrating to and bought it to keep those users. It isn't exactly "predicting future trends." They tried to do it again when everyone's parents joined Instagram so the kids moved to Snapchat, but thankfully that deal didn't go through

wonderwonder 5y ago
"All that Zuck did was notice the platform all the kids are migrating to and bought it to keep those users. It isn't exactly "predicting future trends." They tried to do it again when everyone's parents joined Instagram so the kids moved to Snapchat, but thankfully that deal didn't go through" I would argue this is exactly what predicting future trends is. See which way the tide is going and make the necessary investments to ride it.
- hbn 5y ago
  I think there's a pretty big difference between buying a rapidly-growing platform and... whatever the hell was shown off in that vaporware announcement video
- spacemark 5y ago
  ...which everybody does. There is nothing special about that particular smart person's ability to predict the future. Appeals to authority based on selectively chosen past performance... let's see how this ages 10 years from now.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I would argue this is exactly what predicting future trends is. It's recognizing current and predicting extremely short-term future trends that lots of other people recognized but didn't have the funds to do exploit in the same way. Metaverse would be something very different.

by hbn 5y ago

wonderwonder 5y ago

"All that Zuck did was notice the platform all the kids are migrating to and bought it to keep those users. It isn't exactly "predicting future trends." They tried to do it again when everyone's parents joined Instagram so the kids moved to Snapchat, but thankfully that deal didn't go through" I would argue this is exactly what predicting future trends is. See which way the tide is going and make the necessary investments to ride it.

hbn 5y ago
I think there's a pretty big difference between buying a rapidly-growing platform and... whatever the hell was shown off in that vaporware announcement video
spacemark 5y ago
...which everybody does. There is nothing special about that particular smart person's ability to predict the future. Appeals to authority based on selectively chosen past performance... let's see how this ages 10 years from now.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I would argue this is exactly what predicting future trends is. It's recognizing current and predicting extremely short-term future trends that lots of other people recognized but didn't have the funds to do exploit in the same way. Metaverse would be something very different.