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by rao-v11 hours ago |
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upvoteby b00ty4breakfast10 hours ago|
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Pretty sure they bought Insta and Whatsapp. I mean, that's not nothing, buying a successful business and keeping it successful for over a decade. But neither Zuck nor Meta made those platforms; they were both established successes in their own right before acquisition.
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upvoteby matwood7 hours ago|
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> keeping it successful

I’m no Zuck fan, but he’s done much more than keep them successful, they have grown a lot.

I remember everyone making fun of him for overpaying for IG and WA. Now both in hindsight look like amazing acquisitions.

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upvoteby stephbook10 hours ago|
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Only The Zuck saw the value though. Why didn't MS, Amazon or Google buy insta? Or some Softbank vehicle?
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upvoteby afavour9 hours ago|
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I’m sure the others saw the value too. It just wasn’t worth as much to them as Zuckerberg was prepared to pay. Not surprising given it’s a service that directly competed with FB in the social space.
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upvoteby b00ty4breakfast6 hours ago|
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Probably because Instagram wasn't a direct competitor to any of those other companies (except maybe Google+, which wasn't even a year old at the time that FB bought Instagram). I don't know why softbank didn't get them.
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upvoteby hn_throwaway_999 hours ago|
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This is the case with most tech companies. Google bought Android, YouTube, DoubleClick, Maps, etc. etc.
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upvoteby happymellon9 hours ago|
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Although in this case Meta bought companies that were already established and successful.

Google bought Android before it had released products.

Google Maps was purchased, but was Where 2 actually a successful product prior to that?

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upvoteby hn_throwaway_997 hours ago|
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I feel like you just cherry picked from my examples. YouTube was certainly successful - Google bought them because their own Google Video competitor was a flop. DoubleClick was also obviously huge. Where 2 had a successful product, it just wasn't web based (nor do I think free), so didn't have anywhere near the distribution that Google enabled once the team ported it to run in a browser.
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upvoteby disgruntledphd26 hours ago|
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Instagram had around 10mn users at acquisition, so they might not have gotten to where they are without FB. Whatsapp was a successful product that didn't make any money.
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upvoteby qwertybrah11 hours ago|
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One step further. Besides Facebook itself whqt has zuck been visionary about ? Instw and WhatsApp was bought. He thought chatbots was the thing in ‘17, then abandoned it for VR and metaverse, all the while chatbots start taking off. Every time he’s in an interview he talks like he’s some savant, really he got lucky with fb and done nothing since
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upvoteby wjeje10 hours ago|
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Let’s go another step further!

The continual success of fb and instagram has not come from zuck but through glorified A/B testing on steroids whilst lighting employee’s asses on fire each quarter to move the metrics. Visionary genius? My ass. Only Steve Jobs proved he is worthy of that title.

Bro is a fraud. He always was - remember he stole the idea for fb. Thankfully he’s getting found out.

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upvoteby philipnee9 hours ago|
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i argue that most ideas aren't necessary novel, so stealing idea isn't necessary bad.... e.g. i don't think google search was entirely novel, but was well executed.

honestly - meta has built quite a lot of cool things, but c-suite is probably to be blamed for what's going on today.

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upvoteby degamad9 hours ago|
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Search was not novel, but PageRank was novel.
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upvoteby subpixel2 hours ago|
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Stealing an idea is different from lying to people in order to steal their actual business, which is more like what Zuckerberg did.
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upvoteby hyperhello10 hours ago|
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Did he really steal the idea? I thought the idea was just a message board for Harvard students. That isn’t novel.
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upvoteby razakel5 hours ago|
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The original idea was this:

>I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.

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upvoteby red_admiral6 hours ago|
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Lots of things, but he then chucked all the profits at a stupid idea that he even renamed the company for.
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upvoteby nomel10 hours ago|
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Look at Meta's profits by year.
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upvoteby Danox6 hours ago|
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Meta profits are good but they’re closing in on the $100 billion dollar mark in their Meta Quest/AI fiasco just because you can afford it doesn’t mean you should do it. See another company called Oracle for a similar path.
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upvoteby philipnee10 hours ago|
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build and tear down metaverse. zero sum.
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