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nns

Wouldn't it be wise for Facebook to just replace Messenger with WhatsApp and offer that as a platform?

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I'm confused about this as well. Why are they choosing to compete with themselves?

from what I am reading they consider it a different market segment and are thus, pivoting.

Twice as many chances for success! :)

Is it really competition though?

You choose A, Facebook wins. You choose B, Facebook wins.

I believe WhatsApp and FB Messenger are the two top chat networks right now (sadly), at least when looking at regional dominance. And since the value of a network to the individual is dependant on the size, AND they're locked up, they win whatever you choose.

You might loose because you chose the network with less friends, but that changes nothing in the end.

How is this not different from the strategy MS used to follow either kill opponents or buy them? How did the anti trust dept of US allow whatsapp acquisition since it literally made FB king of everything digital?

Mostly because they still have tons of competitors in the messaging space and they're not leveraging their success in social networking to force success in messaging. I'm personally reachable from 10-15 different forms of messaging (and neither WhatsApp nor FB messenger), and most people probably have at least 4-5 so it's a really tough argument that because of Facebook users have to use WhatsApp or FB messenger.

Valid points, they aren't stiffling anyone, you can use others but since everyone is on whatsapp and facebook you have to use them.

Merge stuff together and you get something clunky like Google+.

They showed a graph in the keynote, WhatsApp for one-on-one communication, Messenger for small group communication. So they see them as different use cases.

That's hilarious. Everyone uses WhatsApp for their friend group.

Maybe everyone that you know. Surely Facebook has the data to make a distinction like this.

They may not have that data in a form useful for comparison, and the data may conflict with your assumption. Intra business politics / desired integrations / engineering reasons can dissuade teams from a pure data-based decision.

Everyone I know uses Messenger for group conversations.

Anecdotes can go both ways. As far as I've been able to tell, WhatsApp is most popular outside of the US.

I think that's because of WhatsApp's availability as a Java phone applet that was cheaper than texting in a number of places.

Not for Brazil, at least. Here, most people use WhatsApp: local and even larger business are starting to list their WhatsApp number in advertising, even radio stations use it for users to send messages instead of calling.

And it's even hard to spot a Java-applet based phone. Even the lowest classes just use cheaper or older Androids.

for their friend group outside the US

Facebook and WhatsApp already have vastly different feature sets, and don't even work similarly (with regard to devices, etc.). That's by design.

Messenger and WhatsApp are popular in different regions but combine both and you have the lions share of worldwide mobile chat users. For example, Messenger is much more dominant in the US, while WhatsApp is crazy popular in places like Brazil or Germany. So i guess they are just starting with the US market (Messenger) and will eventually offer similar stuff on WhatsApp.

Messenger works great for me and my friends group. Whatsapp seems largely redundant since we stopped bothering to swap numbers years ago

I'm thinking that either they are really afraid of messing up WhatsApp like how the current and previous Skype owners messed up, or else it is part of the purchase deal to mainly stay out of WhatsApp.

The whole end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp doesn't seem in the Facebook spirit at all.

But they can't really monetize chat by inserting ads. That would be a dumb thing to do, even if we assume most users don't care about privacy. Well, the reality is even those who don't really don't like having an AI spitting out an ad in the middle of your chat with friend.

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