Contemplating Facebook's Strategy Based on Acquisitions

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:47:01 -0700

Facebook has been making waves lately, tidal waves in fact. After $19 billion for WhatsApp and $2 billion for Oculus, some are left scratching their head and asking some very good questions. Why? How are these related?

I think the answer is simpler than many have offered. I believe it boils down to Facebook wanting to stay relevant long term, no matter what technology or platform enables it.

WhatsApp #

Messaging is a (or the?) primary means of communicating for billions of people, and Facebook Messenger was largely a flop. In a sense, messaging is the simplest highly private social network; you share very specific things with very specific people. I firmly believe that messaging with reign supreme as a top, if not the top, use of mobile phones for the foreseeable future.

WhatsApp: Pay-For-Content is Alive and Well

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 07:11:42 -0700

Apple has made a strong business on trusting that consumers are willing to pay good money for great products. This WhatsApp deal demonstrates the exact same thing. People are willing to spend what they consider to be a fair amount of money for a great product with a great user experience. Obviously some people don’t call Apple’s prices “fair,” but that’s a topic for another time.

This $19B WhatsApp deal makes me extremely happy (and I don’t use WhatsApp or Facebook) if only for the reason of demonstrating that a customer experience focused product still has tremendous value. We don’t need free products with ad support to make the world spin.

WhatsApp on OpTe.ch

Contemplating Facebook's Strategy Based on Acquisitions

WhatsApp #

WhatsApp: Pay-For-Content is Alive and Well