On: Is Meta having growing pains or in a death spiral?

[ctvo]

> Everybody knows the emperor (Zuck) has no clothes and it's been known for quite some time. He got lucky, he made a lot of cash. Good for him! Now it's become painfully obvious he has no clue what to do. Why? Because he got lucky.

> ... The odds of hitting the unicorn jackpot are minuscule. The odds of hitting it twice? Relying only on luck? Practically zero. That's why Zuck is flailing.

Mark has been an excellent CEO by all measures. The purchase of Instagram may be the best acquisition in tech history and it was on his watch. Then he did it again with WhatsApp. It's hard to describe making mostly the correct decisions over and over for 20 years luck.

Facebook is a money printer and continues to be one, detour into the metaverse or not.

[dilippkumar → ctvo]

> Then he did it again with WhatsApp.

As an outsider, it hasn’t been clear that whatsapp has generated any meaningful amount of cash flow 9 years after acquisition.

For a price tag of $19 billion, I’m not sure how to see this as a win.

[netsharc → dilippkumar]

On the flip side, Zuck did see them as a big threat in the messaging area, so buying them was a way to stop making them a threat. I wonder if Zuck saw that WhatsApp could also pivot to social media, apparently people had stopped sharing stuff on FB and started sharing them on private group chats instead. Later on WA did add stories, but that was Zuck's "fuck you" to Snapchat.

[Sai_ → dilippkumar]

Clearly your WhatsApp hasn't been inundated with offers from a proliferation of Jio* named companies.

They're monetizing WhatsApp for sure - it's just that they are monetizing it through intermediaries offering transactional and marketing content.

[dilippkumar → Sai_]

Actually, it has not. There have been 0 advertisements on WhatsApp for me.

Also, half my friends have migrated over to Signal anyways, advertisements on whatsapp will just speed up that transition I suppose.

[JohnFen → ctvo]

> Mark has been an excellent CEO by all measures.

Facebook has a pretty terrible reputation with almost all demographic groups, so he hasn't been excellent by all measures.

[anthonypasq → JohnFen]

we're talking about Meta not Facebook. Why does everyone seem to forget this. Also Facebook is huge in the developing world.

[JohnFen → anthonypasq]

I don't think many people on HN forget this. I'm just not willing to let them dodge the cloud that comes with the name "Facebook" by adopting a new name. I do the same with Google and won't refer to them as Alphabet.

[galoisscobi → ctvo]

> Mark has been an excellent CEO by all measures.

So would you agree that Mark has done excellent at building products that are good for society’s mental health and well-being?

[notyourwork → ctvo]

Buying a competitor (insta) is the greatest acquisition of all time? Literally just building a moat, not something I’d describe as the best in kind.

[ctvo → notyourwork]

Great. Go start your company and buy some competitors and become more successful than Meta.

The space of what to buy, when to buy it, what to build, etc. etc. is all so easy in hindsight. Instagram was making 0 money and cost 1 billion to acquire -- a large amount at the time. It could have blown up in their face, but it didn't. Then he did it again with Whatsapp. Please stop pretending like things are easy from your sofa.