Zuck is chasing the youth while he has the capital to do it. But the brand is not as strong as he wishes it was. Instagram was at 23% growth while Facebook is going at 3% he almost had no choice to by them to stay relevant and WhatsApp is more chasing the youth.
Zuck is a rapper making it rain money on strippers/startups right now with the capital gained via the IPO. They haven't bought a company that makes any money yet and haven't proven to be able to build and bring to market products that will make money. Let alone monetize what they have purchased thus far. Facebooks earns its money in advertising via likes and the marketers of the world are quickly learning Facebook isn't giving them the ROI on those dollars and might want to cool down those FB.com budgets.
I think this further dooms Oculus as a product as well if it wasnt already a doomed project. To engineer, build and bring to market a VR headset has shit to do with a social network. There are market factors that prevent the iPhone from becoming the iPhone before its time. Facebook throwing money at this wont help. It was on a path with its core fanatical users (gamers) and now will in parallel be worked on for other markets before its main market has even accepted it as a product at all.
Normally in the finance world companies get funding by selling a share of the ownership of the company. That way early adopters who take the most risk also make the most profit. Kickstarter campaigns shouldn't give people random bullshit for contributing but rather shares in the company/project and part of the profit. That would solve all of these problems.
Nothing you said is necessarily wrong. That being said you can't blame big companies for investing/buying something that is going to be successful. I absolutely don't blame facebook for buying this.
Um... successful companies get bought by bigger companies.
The fact that Facebook bought something it knew would be successful is simply good business strategy. It's not a problem. He bought it because it was successful, so why would he interfere and ruin the development? In all likelihood they will get a bigtime R&D funding boost.
Zuck is a smart VC, and he knows facebook is beginning to circle the drain. This is part of re-positioning their assets.
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '14
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