For sure, I think directors simply didn't understand how online communities worked. Facebook must have been the first company to fully realise this, buying both Instagram and WhatsApp but not attempting to internalize their communities under the Facebook brand. It would've been pure capital destruction if they had done that.

I'm pretty sure they're going to have to write off the whatsapp investment. At least Instagram has a viable standalone business model. They'll lose the Whatsapp userbase at the drop of a hat, and it's already hard to monetize to begin with.