News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage by mikem170 on Thursday December 10, 2020 @11:48AM (#25375564)
> Facebook has direct competitors that can overtake them in just a few years

>Instagram was made by a few python coders in months. This shows how easy it is to make a product that competes with Facebook

Then why did Facebook buy Instagram, instead whipping up some python code on their own if it's so easy?

I would conclude they bought them to be anti-competitive.

Re:Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage by mrits on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:26PM (#25376010)
For their users.
Re:Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage by fakedang on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:42PM (#25376221)
At that point (around the time of the acquisition), I guess one could say there was significant overlap between FB and IG users, and that FB had more users than IG.
Re:Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage by mrits on Thursday December 10, 2020 @02:11PM (#25377202)
No, Instagram had a thriving mobile user base. Facebook was getting demolished by Twitter in this area at the time. FB knew the future was mobile
Re:Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage by fakedang on Thursday December 10, 2020 @04:55PM (#25379267)
That clearly implies that the acquisition wasn't for the users but for the platform and the brand value associated with being present on mobile.