A couple of days have passed since the news of the monster acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook broke. More people have written about it already than I can possibly link to so I won’t even try. My immediate reaction just based on financial metrics was that Facebook massively overpaid but I wasn’t sure about the strategic side. Having had some time to think about that I am now convinced that this deal makes no sense. Why? Because phone number based messenger apps can bootstrap very rapidly off ...

A couple of days have passed since the news of the monster acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook broke. More people have written about it already than I can possibly link to so I won’t even try. My immediate reaction just based on financial metrics was that Facebook massively overpaid but I wasn’t sure about the strategic side. Having had some time to think about that I am now convinced that this deal makes no sense. Why? Because phone number based messenger apps can bootstrap very rapidly off ...

Facebook is in the unique position today to face both the problems of centralization and decentralization. On its centralized core platform it is confronted with making content decisions, while on WhatsApp it struggles with slowing down the spread of rumors and calls for violence. Just to be clear, I have no sympathy for Facebook which has been arrogant about these issues and has put growth above anything else. Nonetheless everyone who is building new decentralized platforms would do well to ...

Facebook is in the unique position today to face both the problems of centralization and decentralization. On its centralized core platform it is confronted with making content decisions, while on WhatsApp it struggles with slowing down the spread of rumors and calls for violence. Just to be clear, I have no sympathy for Facebook which has been arrogant about these issues and has put growth above anything else. Nonetheless everyone who is building new decentralized platforms would do well to ...