
Why Facebook Has Entrusted Its Future to the CEO of PayPal - davidiach
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/on-david-marcus-and-facebook/?mbid=social_fb
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freshhawk
"Messaging is a modern version of the social graph"

"The company that controls the messaging platform will control the future of
the way we interact with people and, quite possibly, with businesses"

"The growth team is the equivalent of Facebook’s Navy SEALs"

The entire section about privacy.

I know it's Wired but this article isn't even a puff piece, it's reads like
it's straight from Facebook marketing or a spoof of marketroid buzzwords. Am I
alone in finding its tone gross? I've seen better journalism in "sponsored
content" on buzzfeed.

~~~
mblevin
It's breathless reporter-speak, and it's often not actually intentional or
conscious. Many reporters truly believe they are uncovering Woodward and
Bernstein level stuff every time they hit "publish".

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mblevin
This is less about THE future of FB rather than a bet on ONE possible outcome
- transaction monetization on a many-to-many network, vs continued growth of
their highly targeted advertising product.

On the internet just like in real life, someone has to be selling something to
somebody.

When you're a "free" service (e.g. your users are your product), you can
either facilitate transactions and take a cut (e.g. payments, in-app
upgrades/stickers/etc), or you can direct the user firehose to someone
(advertising, B2B services, data, etc). Facebook has predominantly been
successful up until now doing the latter.

Messenger is a both a hedge against declining app/website engagement numbers
and continued bottoming out of CPM/CPC for digital ads, as well as a bet on a
Westernized version of WeChat and LINE have done, particularly in payments.

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thebear
I hope that this is just a reporter getting carried away with his subject, and
not an indication of what our civilization has come to:

 _[...] When Despicable Me 2 came out in theaters last year, Facebook worked
up a partnership that let users download Minion stickers. It’s easy to imagine
a future strategy for making money off stickers.

Marcus has even grander ambitions. [...]_

~~~
programminggeek
I'm not sure you understand how much people love stickers and personalization
in general.

~~~
hagbardgroup
Yeah, but it's not like there aren't a lot of companies already out there
making personalized stickers. There are many of them.

A marginal innovation in sticker-making is something interesting for Sticker
Makers Quarterly; not the flagship magazine for thinkfluential technological
super-innovation.

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softdev12
I agree that messaging is a hugely important aspect for the future of
Facebook, but I wouldn't say that FB's entire future is dependent on
messaging. The article's title, with its use of "entrusted its future" seems
to imply more than what's really at stake.

I would argue that virtual reality (with Oculus) or even the core social
network base product is more important to facebook's future than messaging.
Sure messaging is important, but it's becoming more and more of a commodity.

At the end of the day, I think facebook has currently entrusted its future to
Zuckerberg and not the CEO of PayPal.

~~~
SG-
The younger generation isn't bothering with Facebook as much (today's teens to
early 20s) and going right to services that offer messaging and image sharing,
maybe that's what the article is referring to.

~~~
dasil003
You mean like WhatsApp?

~~~
zecg
Yes. The 13-year-olds are all over that shit, it's mind boggling. I became
aware of this recently when I found out my niece's class has a WhatsApp group
and it's their shared space, like a permanent party in there. After seeing
that, I realized FB in comparison seems static, linear and (blasphemy)
positively clean and well organized.

~~~
phatfish
As a 30+ i find it funny that chat rooms are making a come back. I used IRC
(and still use) back in the day, and the funky flash and java chat rooms that
a lot of mainstream websites used to host to build their communities.

WhatsApp always appealed more than Facebook because it is much more like a
chat room.

What goes around comes around as they say.

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mullingitover
I thought it was perversely amusing that when Facebook's mobile app was
finally usable, they went ahead and got themselves into a power struggle with
their users by trying to force standalone messaging on them. I ended up
deleting the Facebook app entirely and went back to using the web site.
Whenever I've brought this up in a group of friends, I've found I'm not the
only one to get that bright idea.

I wonder how many millions of users they got to delete their main app with
this move.

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erikpukinskis
Seems like Facebook is in the "we have to control this market or we'll lose
relevance" stage now. Almost nothing about a mission. Helping people share
their emotions I guess. And some hand wavy stuff about reliability. But
messenger just seems like a land grab. It doesn't seem like messenger solves
any important new problems.

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pulkitpulkit
Learnt a lot about Messenger's features from this article, even though I use
it prob once-a-week.. seems they haven't done that great a job teaching users
/ onboarding them to new functionality. Feel like that would be right up the
Growth team's alley

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toephu2
was this article setup and paid for by FB?
([http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html))

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the_watcher
I understand why the piece has the title that it does - Messenger is
considered - both internally and externally - as a critical piece of
Facebook's roadmap. But man is it hyperbolic to imply that a company with the
ads engine of Facebook's future is entirely dependent on an unfinished
messaging product.

