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Facebook's Plan To Let Companies It Buys Live Independently is Over (techcrunch.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the it-is-Mark's-company dept.
Jon Russell, writing for TechCrunch: Mark Zuckerberg was quick to realize that Facebook, the largest social network in the world, doesn't have a monopoly on all users nor can it bank on holding its position as top dog forever. Thus he instituted a policy of buying up promising rivals and integrating them into the Facebook 'group' in a strategy designed to be a win-win for all. But by leaving Facebook in abrupt fashion this week, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger -- the founders of Instagram -- have shown that the social network's vision of letting acquired businesses operate independently simply isn't feasible. [...] The original idea is a best-of-both-worlds approach: a company's finances are infinitely secured and it can grow as needed inside the Facebook 'family,' with access to resources like engineering, marketing, admin, etc. That was also the plan for WhatsApp, but founding pair Jan Koum and Brian Acton managed four and three and a half years, respectively, at Facebook following their $19 billion acquisition in 2014. VR firm Oculus, another billion-dollar purchase, lost co-founders Palmer Lucky (political scandal) and Brendan Iribe (reshuffled) three years after its deal.
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Facebook's Plan To Let Companies It Buys Live Independently is Over More

Facebook's Plan To Let Companies It Buys Live Independently is Over

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  • Because when I think win-win for all (Score:4, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @10:31AM (#57373322)
    I think of the dominate player in a space buying up all potential competition with little or no regulatory oversight.

  • I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further.

  • Worthless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @10:35AM (#57373356)

    - have shown that the social network's vision of letting acquired businesses operate independently simply isn't feasible

    Bullshit.

    All it's shown is that the now-billionaire founders of those companies don't like playing second fiddle to Zuck.

    And being billionaires, they don't have to hang around for a paycheck - although they probably hang around for a few years because of golden handcuffs. [wikipedia.org]

    • Bullshit.

      You need ot rewite the sentance to reveal the true meaning. "feasible" in this case means "not heavily monetized enough" and "not creepy enough with your data".

      Basically they're going to pull them all closer put in more ads, od cross-app user analytics and basically make them nothing ohter than different interfaces to facebook.

      I strongly suspect though that the reason people prefer instagram to facebook is because it isn't facebook. I recokon we'll see declining users of those other services within

    • If a company is for sale, it's probably because they don't have a route to profitability. If they did, they'd get some investors and follow that route. Therefore, if Facebook buys some company, they probably can't operate it independently... and make a profit. And since Facebook is in the business of making money, it doesn't make sense for them to do anything but roll the other business into their normal operations.

  • News flash ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Giant greedy corporation buys other corporations and expects to milk those corporations for all they're worth.

    I mean, who is surprised by this?

    Facebook wants data and ad revenue, they have no interest in the privacy policies or plans the companies they buy had before that.

    You sold your company to Facebook for an assload of money, don't expect they'll let you do anything you want forever thereafter. Now we have newly minted billionaires whinging they no longer have creative control because the other asshole

    • retire BorgBill (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Zuck should definitely replace Gates in the Borg icon.
  • A family featuring an organization diagram with a lot of positions crossed out is usually called a syndicate.
  • It's inevitable that an acquired company cannot maintain it's independence within a larger organization. Eventually the founder/leader of the acquired company will feel constrained, unable to pursue their own vision, or find themselves at odds with the other leadership. As for the leadership of the overarching organization, they will always make sure that their position, their vision takes precedence. They will rein in a subordinate company that is growing to fast/strong and affecting the core business (

  • But by leaving Facebook in abrupt fashion this week

    When a company is acquired, it's almost always the case that the senior managers / founders move on to something new after a "transition period."

    Usually the staff in duplicated admin roles are the first to go (HR / Accounting) followed by those that depart after sales and marketing merge - Senior execs are next.

    Happens over and over and over again the same way - And will continue to do so.

  • The world would be better of, IMO, without the likes of twitter, Fakebook, Instagram and the like. How much false information, from both sides of politics have ignited such hate and discord in the USA, for one, but around the world? Now, with them "scrubbing" content THEY deem bad, it's just going to make it worse.

  • Yahoo had a long history of buying up companies for billions of dollars and then never doing anything productive with those investments. Facebook is the new Yahoo.

  • I use Instagram because it doesn't have the toxicity of F*c*book. If Instagram turns into F*c*book I'll stop using it, and so will most other people.

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