STREET DOGS

At the end of June, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had hit a new level: 2-billion monthly active users. That number means 2-billion different people used Facebook in the preceding month. It is hard to grasp just how extraordinary that is. Bear in mind that thefacebook – its original name – was launched exclusively for Harvard students in 2004.

No human enterprise, no new technology or utility or service, has ever been adopted so widely so quickly. The speed of uptake far exceeds that of the internet itself, let alone ancient technologies such as television or cinema or radio. – John Lanchester (lrb.co.uk)

Even though he was once an executive at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings, favours investing in Amazon instead, he has told CNBC’s Fast Money: Halftime Report.

Palihapitiya says Facebook and Google face more regulatory risk, given the many retailers that compete with Amazon. “Amazon is a microscopic portion of global consumption today,” he says, “so ultimately I think it has more room to grow before it invites regulatory overview. On the other hand, Facebook and Google effectively are surveillance states.”

Palihapitiya notes that many big technology firms have seen their stocks soar, making it tempting to take gains. But he thinks investors should reframe the way they think about longterm trajectories.

Amazon, for instance, is competing against Wal-Mart, which has acquired e-commerce companies such as Jet.com and Bonobos. But with tools such as Alexa, robots and cloud, Amazon’s technology could lead it to victory over “laggard competitors”.

“It is competing against fundamentally impaired companies,” says Palihapitiya, “that don’t have the technical savvy, don’t have the capabilities….”