[tick_tock_tick]

The article reads like a bad hit job it tries to paint facebooks position as bleak while ignore all its products have continued to experience amazing growth.

It paints a picture of what the author want the world to be like rather than reality. One of the biggest examples is how they view regulation as a risk to Facebook while Facebooks views it as a guarantee of market dominance.

[Barrin92]

I can't speak to every point raised in the article, but at least the jealousy aspect doesn't seem so off-base if one looks at the recent re-branding of Whatsapp.

Whatsapp now has a giant "whatsapp by facebook" advert right on the loading page of the application. There was a quite funny article a while back how it led to school children deleting whatsapp because they thought facebook was "uncool" but didn't even know it was a product of the company.

I'd also caution about "arguments from growth", given that it's totally possible that given better decisions it might have grown even faster. Sort of like the medieval physician who argued that blood-letting worked because the patient recovered. It'd be better to address the substance of the article.

[eclipsetheworld]

More likely a decision made to strengthen Facebook's case to antitrust regulators. The "by facebook" branding suggests a deeper integration between different apps and therefore makes it seemingly harder to break up Facebook's app family.

[dntbnmpls]

> I'd also caution about "arguments from growth", given that it's totally possible that given better decisions it might have grown even faster.

Anything is possible and that's conjecture. Not news. Argument from proven growth/data/etc is far better than "argument from hypotheticals/what ifs/etc".

> There was a quite funny article a while back how it led to school children deleting whatsapp because they thought facebook was "uncool" but didn't even know it was a product of the company.

Seems like another of these manufactured nonsense from the industry. How many children? How old were they? Care to share the link so we can all have a good laugh?

> It'd be better to address the substance of the article.

So why don't you? You didn't mention anything substantive from the article in your comment. Is it because there is no substance. What objective, factual, relevant information did you take away from an article which is mostly subjective, gossipy and pointless.

[rozab]

Well, have you noticed it uses 'cool' futuristic lettering instead of Facebook's actual logo? They know how uncool they are, they know the Facebook brand doesn't work with WhatsApp.

[Uhhrrr]

To me it reads like an interview with Systrom.

[dntbnmpls]

> The article reads like a bad hit job it tries to paint facebooks position as bleak while ignore all its products have continued to experience amazing growth.

Did you really expect anything better from bloomberg? Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. If zuckerburg "held it back", then he should "hold back" everything and become a trillionaire.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...

4 out of the top 6 social media platforms are owned by zuckerburg. Hate the guy for his greed and insatiable appetite for your data, but the idea that his "jealousy" held back instagram is laughable. The article reads like a silly gossipy teen manufacturing drama for attention. But that's the media for you.