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by rms_returns 3859 days ago
FB is too large an organization to survive long when competition is eating a huge chunk of their services. And especially so, if the competition is someone like telegram who is both free and open source.

Their decision to purchase WhatsApp turned out to be very ill-timed. WhatsApp was at the peak of their popularity when they did, but that peak was only because of ignorance of the masses - ignorance about glaring holes in WhatsApp security, and ignorance about significantly better alternatives like Telegram. But in the age of Internet, ignorance hardly lasts long among the masses, of all people, Zuckerburg should have known this!

2 comments

When FB bought WhatsApp, they estimated that the user base only had a useful life of seven years.

That was one or two years ago now and I'm not sure if the estimate has been updated, but it would seem FB is running out of time to convert the user base.

Do you have a source for your claims?
FB's SEC filings.

I can pull the link for you tomorrow.

Here you go: http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1326801-14-47&...

The claim is made at about 95% of the way through that document.

Buying WhatsApp made plenty of sense. Paying 22B was 22X what it was worth.