[bluecheese452]

This is the guy who tried to make the metaverse a thing. He has been out of touch for decades now.

[elorant]

He's also the guy who bought Instagram for $1bn and turned into a $70bn behemoth. If that's out of touch then I don't know what the opposite would be.

[jerojero]

They bought out Instagram because it was shaping out to be a huge competitor, so I think that business would have grown to be a multibillion dollar one regardless.

It was definitely very smart to buy them out when they did.

I just think you're focusing on the wrong part.

[umeshunni]

It's entirely possible that he's changed and his pulse of the market has changed in the 10+ years since that decision.

[kranke155]

He did that because it was a solid data driven decision.

Not sure he's shown ability to do anything beyond making solid decisions on which competitors to acquire.

[zeroonetwothree]

Wasn’t this like 14 years ago? So not sure it really contradicts the comment you reply to.

[hsuduebc2]

Exactly. The yes man culture must be pretty hard near him.

[simpaticoder]

It's really hard to tell if an idea is bad without trying it out first. Zuck's runway was unusually long. And who knows? Maybe he should have stuck with it a while longer. We cannot say for certain that it would always have failed.

[magicalist]

> Maybe he should have stuck with it a while longer. We cannot say for certain that it would always have failed.

Well, their execution was also very expensive and yet garbage, which is crazy with how many insanely talented people they had to work on it at one point or the other. It seems pretty clear cut as executive failure.