Why Whatsapp is no threat to Facebook
The truth is that even if angry users want to switch platforms, they really have no place to go
ve been doing some reporting in the Caribbean and elsewhere recently, which led me to begin using Whatsapp for the first time. In large swaths of the world, people use Whatsapp as their primary texting tool: it’s free, it’s fast, and you can send photos, videos and audio as well as text. And you can set up a chatroom for group communication.
The latter feature is the core of what Facebook Inc offers its users. Indeed, the people with whom I’ve been texting on Whatsapp told me that when they first started to communicate as a group four years ago, they relied on Facebook. They moved to Whatsapp because it worked better for them. As a social media platform, it was useful to them in a way that Facebook no longer was.
To put it another way, if Facebook hadn’t bought Whatsapp in 2014, Whatsapp might now be a pretty stiff competitor for Facebook. When Facebook bought it, Whatsapp had 500 million users. Today, it has over 1.5 billion — within shouting distance of Facebook’s 2 billion-plus.
Then there’s Instagram. Though its numbers are smaller (about 800 million), its story is similar. Many people who were using Facebook to post photos have gravitated to Instagram because that’s what it’s all about. And like Whatsapp, Instagram also might have been a serious competitor to Facebook. Except that Facebook bought it in 2012.
Facebook is now in reputational hell, over scandals on data privacy and Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US presidential election. If ever there were a time when a strong competitor might be able to make serious inroads, it is now. Yet angry users who want to switch platforms really have no place to go. There’s almost nothing else out there with the critical mass of users you need for a halfway-decent social media site.
The real Facebook/whatsapp question — and let’s throw Instagram in there too — is why regulators allowed Facebook to buy them in the first place. In 2010, Zuckerberg boasted that he bought companies for their talented staff, rather than for the businesses about various aspects of life like: god, destiny, heaven, miracle, ghosts, afterlife, love, etc. These intangible identities and concepts do not possess any physical evidence, so it is difficult for some people to believe in it. Their mind fails to fathom these unseen things or realities even after much deliberation. What a person thinks to be true without any evidence becomes her core belief which defines her life, manifesting her desires. A lack of belief is always the main cause why some people are unable to manifest what they desire. themselves. With Instagram and Whatsapp, that mantra obviously no longer held: He bought them because he could see that one day, they might become serious threats to Facebook’s social media primacy. That seems obvious now. But that insight was missed by the government’s antitrust regulators in the US and even by the usually more-sceptical European Union regulators.
I looked at what the various government regulators were saying at the time of the acquisitions. In the case of Whatsapp, it doesn’t appear that the US Justice Department did much at all, leaving the heavy lifting to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). After insisting that Whatsapp not change its privacy protections, the FTC approved the deal. The review took two months. (Four years later, the Whatsapp privacy protections are exactly what Facebook is aiming to change.) As for the EU’S anti-trust regulators, they too were focused on privacy, and approved the deal with similar warnings.
The Instagram acquisition, two years before that of Whatsapp, was approved because of a failure of imagination: Regulators couldn’t envision the photo-sharing company ever competing with Facebook.
Today, in addition to having more than its fair share of eyeballs, ads and “marketing opportunities”, Instagram serves another important purpose for Facebook: It’s the company’s Snapchat killer. Every time Snapchat adds a new feature, Instagram copies it. No wonder Facebook doesn’t seem too worried about competitors.
In an ideal world, an aggressive anti-trust department would sue Facebook to force it to divest its two acquisitions. Instead, this Justice Department put its energy into breaking up the AT&T-TIME Warner deal. What US regulators should be focusing on is the big Internet companies that are only getting more powerful.
In a paper published in October, Carl Shapiro, the University of California Berkeley anti-trust economist, acknowledged the high degree of difficulty in anticipating how future competition might evolve, but he argued that regulators should try anyway.
“There would be a big payoff in terms of competition and innovation if the DOJ and FTC could selectively prevent mergers that serve to solidify the positions of leading incumbent firms, including dominant technology firm, by eliminating future challengers,” Shapiro wrote.
For all of Facebook’s reputational problems, no one in the government is calling for it to be broken up. But if this Justice Department truly wants to stop mergers that reduce competition and innovation, it should focus less on AT&T and more on Facebook — face the future, not the past.
IN ADDITION TO HAVING MORE THAN ITS FAIR SHARE OF EYEBALLS AND MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES, INSTAGRAM SERVES ANOTHER IMPORTANT PURPOSE: IT’S FACEBOOK’S SNAPCHAT KILLER
To be successful, one should understand the major beliefs that influence the work. If you believe you are fragile, the biochemistry of your body unquestionably obeys and manifests it. If you believe you are tough, your body mirrors it. Beliefs run in the background, like the operating system running in a computer. So, stick to positive beliefs and see the outcome.