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> 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 la

by 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 qiskit 4y ago

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.