My weird mind wants to imagine Mark Zuckerberg saying, “I told you!” to Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy but I wouldn’t let it.
I love Mark Zuckerberg; he’s one of the young tech guys that inspire me. I admire how he’s grown as an individual and how Facebook has grown from a baby company to an adult company striving for mobile and communications dominance.
Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is connecting the world via communication. There are other entrepreneurs connecting the world via other means – like Elon Musk – and it’s absolutely impressive.
With Facebook coming into the tech space on February 4, 2004, and scaling importantly over the past twelve years, there’s no doubt that someday Facebook will own almost all communications platform on earth. It’ll be a good time to be alive.
This is why it acquired Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock; WhatsApp for $19 billion; Oculus VR for $2 billion; and then in 2013 and in the spirit of acquisition fever, Facebook made an offer of $3 billion (in cash) to Snapchat. The billion dollar game!
The co-founders: Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy said no because they saw a broader vision for Snapchat and didn’t want to sell for the short-run benefit.
Let’s recall that in July 2006 when Facebook was but 2 years old, Zuckerberg said no to Yahoo’s offer of $1 billion to acquire Facebook. In his words, “They had no definitive idea about the future. They did not properly value things that did not yet exist so they were, therefore, undervaluing the business.”
True or not, I can’t imagine what would’ve happened to Facebook had Zuckerberg agreed to sell for $1 billion. The once-upon-a-time Internet King: Yahoo has been experiencing a decline for a long time and was just sold to Verizon for $5 billion in late July of this year.
I like that Zuckerberg said no. I think Evan and Bobby are Zuckerberg’s fans and they were only toeing in their predecessor’s path. They said no too – same reason but different sentence structure.
According to Mashable, Zuckerberg informed Spiegel that Facebook was going to crush them with the Facebook Poke. That came off as a threat but I believe it was a promise that never worked out…
…until Instagram Stories walked into the negotiation this week. Based on users’ feedback, Instagram Stories is a replica of Snapchat with few additions and subtractions here and there.
I’ve got lots of questions about the entrance of Instagram Stories as a feature in Instagram.
The first: With over 200 million active users on Instagram, would this signal the further rise of Instagram and the fall of Snapchat?
The last: What do you think? Let me know in the comment box; I found it hard to figure how Snapchat works but in pictures, I see that flower filter on people’s head almost always– no, I don’t want to ever put that around my head in a picture. Thank you!
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