[throwaway84742]

That's the official strategy of FB. They estimate the half-life of any social service to be ~7 years. They fully expect that FB-the-feed will eventually decelerate and then gradually slide into obscurity. That's why they have a bunch of services that aren't FB-the-feed: to prepare for that inevitable eventuality.

[mercer]

That sounds interesting. Do you have any sources for that claim?

[throwaway84742]

As CNN would say, it's "from sources familiar with Zuck's thinking". I guess that's not the kind of "sources" you were looking for. I know this from people who work there.

Think about it: it just makes sense. Nothing lasts forever, and they have to sustain their business, so they buy popular "social" stuff from time to time (Instagram, WhatsApp), and unbundle the stuff that may survive without the feed (Messenger).

[mercer]

Since you're on a throwaway, any chance you could ask them why WhatsApp is so low on features? Everyone I know uses it for many of their social interactions, and I find myself mostly frustrated that they don't use Telegram with its many useful features (especially for developers).

So far my theories are that 1) FB still doesn't want to give up on its flagship product, or 2) FB doesn't want to seem too actively investing into WhatsApp for either PR or legal reasons.

[throwaway84742]

From what I heard, WhatsApp is still semi-separate, and still relatively small. They just let them be, for now at least. Which, IMO, is wise. Google has ruined many an acquisition by forcing it onto Google infra and letting the Google mafia move in.

As an aside, I like WhatsApp precisely because it doesn’t have a ton of “features”.