В свете того, как Telegram становится все более популярным мессенджером после покупки WhatsApp Фейсбуком, все больше возникает вопрос о том, не переплатил ли Цукерберг за WhatsApp. Ответ на это мы узнаем довольно скоро, как мне кажется — ближайшее будущее покажет, а пока — интересная статья об этом, которая, кстати, как раз утверждает, что таки переплатил.

Why? Because phone number based messenger apps can bootstrap very rapidly off the graph that is contained in people’s address books. We are witnessing that now with the Telegram Messenger app which apparently signed up nearly 5 million users yesterday. The UIs of all of these apps are virtually identical and are also extremely similar to the basic SMS UI that everyone around the world knows and understands. The combination means there is virtually no enduser lock in at the messaging layer.

Потому что надо было свой Messenger развивать, и для этого надо было вложить 1-2 миллиарда в его продвижение:

So instead of paying $19 Billion, Facebook should and could have created its own version and promoted it via its massive network. I am quite convinced that they would have been able to get to half a billion users for a fraction of the amount of money! They could have promoted their version via Facebook itself and then spend a “cool” billion or two on advertising this globally and/or incentivizing installs. Let me repeat the key point: the switching cost for users on a phone number based messaging services is at or near zero (this is different for identity based services and even more so if they are a platform that third parties can integrate with such as WeChat and Kik — the latter is a USV portfolio company).

И вот еще о чрезмерном влиянии Цукерберга на совет директоров компании, не способный контролировать CEO:

I think Mark Zuckerberg blinked and the board didn’t push back hard (or maybe doesn’t even have the power to push back if they wanted to). And in fairness, Mark’s prior acquisition of Instagram was brilliant: great price and an amazing follower network that is based on identities that are separate from phone numbers (and has an obvious native mobile advertising model).