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Amazing how wrong Mark was about lots of things related to Messenger, and how just two months after this email FB ended up paying 20 billion to buy WhatsApp. Yo

by qqtt 4y ago

Amazing how wrong Mark was about lots of things related to Messenger, and how just two months after this email FB ended up paying 20 billion to buy WhatsApp. You get the sense there was a real paranoia about WhatsApp being an existential threat but now almost a decade later and it's hard to see how FB got a return on that 20 billion investment for that particular acquisition. Also, I find it particularly interesting how Mark is so focused on pushing everything into the public "news feed" style sphere, and seems to have a kind of wishful thinking involving messaging in particular transitioning from a private activity you do with your friends to this public bombastic twitter-esque landscape of public figures "sending messages" to their followers and removing the barriers between those communications and "real" communications between your actual friends. He seems to intensely believe that this is really the only way to create a giant business - essentially destroying and corrupting personal private connections to fill your experience with "more engaging" public content to keep you addicted to the platform. Well, especially for chat, that didn't pan out. And now we are entering a period where private stories, private communication, and meaningful communication matters more - Instagram growth falling to single digits and rapidly losing ground to other platforms among younger users (a harbinger of things to come) - Mark's dogmatic commitment to the alter of public newsfeed paradigms has caused almost all his platforms to evolve towards a dying entity one by one - all except for, notably, WhatsApp. One gets the sense that Mark has one trick, and that trick is no longer effective at meaningfully growing and positioning FB for the future, especially compared to its historical growth rates (maybe those were unsustainable anyway).

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Re your first part, WhatsApp could've expanded out into a full social network the same way LINE and WeChat did in Asia. So I think Zuck was onto something Re: the rest: That's an interesting outlook. I wonder if younger audiences are more resilient to being tricked into trying to compete for "Likes" in a semi-public forum of their friends and family..
- annadane 4y ago
  Using a spyware VPN called Onavo might not be the same thing as 'onto something'
- nowherebeen 4y ago
  > WhatsApp could've expanded out into a full social network the same way LINE and WeChat did in Asia That was never going to happen. If you listen to the interviews from Brian Action, he wanted WhatsApp to stay minimal. He didn't like those other apps that had tons of features/ bloat.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Acton left Facebook over a dispute in the direction Facebook wanted to take WhatsApp. Changing the app's direction after his departure seems like it would have been entirely possible.
    - nowherebeen 4y ago
      Not really. Action knew what Zuckerberg was up to. That's why he implemented e2ee behind Zuckerberg's back so he couldn't scrap users' data like he does with Facebook Messenger. To double back and remove e2ee would have caused lot of users to leave. You can't run finance/marketplace on e2ee because you need to know the flow of funds for money laundering regulations. Brian made sure Zuckerberg couldn't turn Whatsapp into another Facebook: data hoarding to sell it. I think he regretted selling Whatsapp deep down. That's why he left a billion on the table. To show to himself he wasn't a complete sell out. That's just my take though.
jorblumesea 4y ago
Back then, everyone was thinking about how to make a super app like WeChat. The thinking was that if you hooked everyone on some practical application, like chat, you could add in banking, lending, games, news, etc. FB sorta did this with FB itself to some extent but never completely achieved that super app status. Messenger obviously did not, and neither did WhatsApp. If someone did do this, they would have achieved complete dominance. That's why it was worth 20B.
hbn 4y ago
This was around the era where Snapchat was starting to take off, and I think someone real forward-thinking should have seen the writing on the wall that young people don't want to be doing all of their social interactions in public any more, nor do they want their cringey past coming back to haunt them. They were on Facebook, and then their moms all joined Facebook. They migrated to Instagram, and then Facebook bought it and pushed all the moms there too. Snapchat though, has a couple unique aspects that I think were critical to its success. First, all the interactions are built around curating who sees it, and keeping things private and temporary. The most public thing you can do is post a story, and that's where you send stuff that even if your mom adds you, you can keep that in mind while sharing to that. But for anything else, you build up a list of people who can see your private story, and send it to that one. And everything that goes to either of those places is gone after 24 hours, which was also not exactly a selling point for the older generation that want to use social media as a scrapbook. The other thing is that Snapchat is quite unintuitive and confusing to use. I've seen this stated as a criticism, and sure you can make it that, but I think that's also part of the secret sauce that made it so successful. The way you use the app is like its own separate language compared to all social media platforms of the past. And that in itself is enough to keep older people off of it, who had enough trouble trying to figure out Facebook. Plus I think there's some fun and engagement to be had when someone says "hey did you know you can do this?" and you discover a new feature in the app. I've been of the theory that Snapchat keeps itself awkward to use on purpose, because it seems legitimately beneficial to keeping its user base.
- easrng 4y ago
  Though Snap Spotlight feels like a tacked-on tiktok clone and the amount of ads on the non-friend stories is crazy.
- sumedh 4y ago
  > First, all the interactions are built around curating who sees it, and keeping things private and temporary. Didnt Google+ had something similar called circles, you could share different things with different people based on which circle they were in.
zzzoom 4y ago
> it's hard to see how FB got a return on that 20 billion investment for that particular acquisition. In many many countries you can't live without WhatsApp. That can't be said about the rest of their apps.
queuebert 4y ago
It's almost like he isn't a good businessman and was just at the right place at the right time. I worry that the majority of billionaires were just lucky and confused that for skill. Then we give them disproportionate influence over society. Basically letting the pigeons drive the bus.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  Reminds me of Fiddler on the Roof: The most important men in town would come to fawn on me! They would ask me to advise them, Like a Solomon the Wise. "If you please, Reb Tevye..." "Pardon me, Reb Tevye..." Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes! And it won't make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong. When you're rich, they think you really know!
- oarabbus_ 4y ago
  >It's almost like he isn't a good businessman and was just at the right place at the right time. What's this claim based off of? Is there anything concrete you can point to in the earnings reports, whether recent or any of them over the last decade, to justify this statement?
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  You're right, they were at the right place, right time. Others were as well though, so I give them credit where it's due.
- ergocoder 4y ago
  From what I see, he is willing to eat his word, be wrong, and be successful instead
tootie 4y ago
It's interesting how detailed and thorough his thinking is and at the same time all his strategic direction seems to be 100% personal intuition. FB must have an army of researchers who could tell him what users actual want and he doesn't even think of that.
qiskit 4y ago
> but now almost a decade later and it's hard to see how FB got a return on that 20 billion investment for that particular acquisition. WhatsApp is the 3rd largest social media platform in the world with 2 billion users. FB today is worth about $400 billion more since buying whatsapp. This is after the recent stock market correction. FB could today sell WhatsApp for a lot more than what they paid for in 2014. Say what you want about zuckerburg, but his purchase of instagram and whatsapp was a big win for him and facebook. > Mark's dogmatic commitment to the alter of public newsfeed paradigms has caused almost all his platforms to evolve towards a dying entity one by one Dying? Facebook owns 4 out of the top 7 social media platforms. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net... Not only that, many business, governments, schools, etc are locked into facebook platforms.
- qqtt 4y ago
  It's current enterprise value is only part of the story - and as we all know a valuable company today can entirely disappear in the future if it is sufficiently mismanaged. Vendor lock in was the favorite tool of IBM and Oracle. Things certainly change no matter how dominant a company can appear at a moment in time. Doubly so with social media with fickle users and generational opportunities with younger cohorts replacing and redefining usage patterns. Yes, Facebook has by all accounts a commanding position, except competitors are demolishing it with younger demographics in key bellwether regions, and there are many concerning aspects about it's recent growth prospects. Facebook holds the record for the biggest single day market cap evaporation in stock market history (and also the record for second biggest). They are closer to their pre-WhatsApp market cap today then they are to their previous peak. We'll see.

by qqtt 4y ago

Firmwarrior 4y ago

Re your first part, WhatsApp could've expanded out into a full social network the same way LINE and WeChat did in Asia. So I think Zuck was onto something Re: the rest: That's an interesting outlook. I wonder if younger audiences are more resilient to being tricked into trying to compete for "Likes" in a semi-public forum of their friends and family..

annadane 4y ago
Using a spyware VPN called Onavo might not be the same thing as 'onto something'
nowherebeen 4y ago
> WhatsApp could've expanded out into a full social network the same way LINE and WeChat did in Asia That was never going to happen. If you listen to the interviews from Brian Action, he wanted WhatsApp to stay minimal. He didn't like those other apps that had tons of features/ bloat.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Acton left Facebook over a dispute in the direction Facebook wanted to take WhatsApp. Changing the app's direction after his departure seems like it would have been entirely possible.
  - nowherebeen 4y ago
    Not really. Action knew what Zuckerberg was up to. That's why he implemented e2ee behind Zuckerberg's back so he couldn't scrap users' data like he does with Facebook Messenger. To double back and remove e2ee would have caused lot of users to leave. You can't run finance/marketplace on e2ee because you need to know the flow of funds for money laundering regulations. Brian made sure Zuckerberg couldn't turn Whatsapp into another Facebook: data hoarding to sell it. I think he regretted selling Whatsapp deep down. That's why he left a billion on the table. To show to himself he wasn't a complete sell out. That's just my take though.

jorblumesea 4y ago

Back then, everyone was thinking about how to make a super app like WeChat. The thinking was that if you hooked everyone on some practical application, like chat, you could add in banking, lending, games, news, etc. FB sorta did this with FB itself to some extent but never completely achieved that super app status. Messenger obviously did not, and neither did WhatsApp. If someone did do this, they would have achieved complete dominance. That's why it was worth 20B.

hbn 4y ago

This was around the era where Snapchat was starting to take off, and I think someone real forward-thinking should have seen the writing on the wall that young people don't want to be doing all of their social interactions in public any more, nor do they want their cringey past coming back to haunt them. They were on Facebook, and then their moms all joined Facebook. They migrated to Instagram, and then Facebook bought it and pushed all the moms there too. Snapchat though, has a couple unique aspects that I think were critical to its success. First, all the interactions are built around curating who sees it, and keeping things private and temporary. The most public thing you can do is post a story, and that's where you send stuff that even if your mom adds you, you can keep that in mind while sharing to that. But for anything else, you build up a list of people who can see your private story, and send it to that one. And everything that goes to either of those places is gone after 24 hours, which was also not exactly a selling point for the older generation that want to use social media as a scrapbook. The other thing is that Snapchat is quite unintuitive and confusing to use. I've seen this stated as a criticism, and sure you can make it that, but I think that's also part of the secret sauce that made it so successful. The way you use the app is like its own separate language compared to all social media platforms of the past. And that in itself is enough to keep older people off of it, who had enough trouble trying to figure out Facebook. Plus I think there's some fun and engagement to be had when someone says "hey did you know you can do this?" and you discover a new feature in the app. I've been of the theory that Snapchat keeps itself awkward to use on purpose, because it seems legitimately beneficial to keeping its user base.

easrng 4y ago
Though Snap Spotlight feels like a tacked-on tiktok clone and the amount of ads on the non-friend stories is crazy.
sumedh 4y ago
> First, all the interactions are built around curating who sees it, and keeping things private and temporary. Didnt Google+ had something similar called circles, you could share different things with different people based on which circle they were in.

zzzoom 4y ago

> it's hard to see how FB got a return on that 20 billion investment for that particular acquisition. In many many countries you can't live without WhatsApp. That can't be said about the rest of their apps.

queuebert 4y ago

It's almost like he isn't a good businessman and was just at the right place at the right time. I worry that the majority of billionaires were just lucky and confused that for skill. Then we give them disproportionate influence over society. Basically letting the pigeons drive the bus.

NegativeLatency 4y ago
Reminds me of Fiddler on the Roof: The most important men in town would come to fawn on me! They would ask me to advise them, Like a Solomon the Wise. "If you please, Reb Tevye..." "Pardon me, Reb Tevye..." Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes! And it won't make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong. When you're rich, they think you really know!
oarabbus_ 4y ago
>It's almost like he isn't a good businessman and was just at the right place at the right time. What's this claim based off of? Is there anything concrete you can point to in the earnings reports, whether recent or any of them over the last decade, to justify this statement?
JKCalhoun 4y ago
You're right, they were at the right place, right time. Others were as well though, so I give them credit where it's due.
ergocoder 4y ago
From what I see, he is willing to eat his word, be wrong, and be successful instead

tootie 4y ago

It's interesting how detailed and thorough his thinking is and at the same time all his strategic direction seems to be 100% personal intuition. FB must have an army of researchers who could tell him what users actual want and he doesn't even think of that.

qiskit 4y ago

> but now almost a decade later and it's hard to see how FB got a return on that 20 billion investment for that particular acquisition. WhatsApp is the 3rd largest social media platform in the world with 2 billion users. FB today is worth about $400 billion more since buying whatsapp. This is after the recent stock market correction. FB could today sell WhatsApp for a lot more than what they paid for in 2014. Say what you want about zuckerburg, but his purchase of instagram and whatsapp was a big win for him and facebook. > Mark's dogmatic commitment to the alter of public newsfeed paradigms has caused almost all his platforms to evolve towards a dying entity one by one Dying? Facebook owns 4 out of the top 7 social media platforms. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net... Not only that, many business, governments, schools, etc are locked into facebook platforms.

qqtt 4y ago
It's current enterprise value is only part of the story - and as we all know a valuable company today can entirely disappear in the future if it is sufficiently mismanaged. Vendor lock in was the favorite tool of IBM and Oracle. Things certainly change no matter how dominant a company can appear at a moment in time. Doubly so with social media with fickle users and generational opportunities with younger cohorts replacing and redefining usage patterns. Yes, Facebook has by all accounts a commanding position, except competitors are demolishing it with younger demographics in key bellwether regions, and there are many concerning aspects about it's recent growth prospects. Facebook holds the record for the biggest single day market cap evaporation in stock market history (and also the record for second biggest). They are closer to their pre-WhatsApp market cap today then they are to their previous peak. We'll see.