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If FB pays $19B for every messenger competitor that gets traction, that's a huge incentive to make more of them.

There are network effects at play; so once a messenger has locked-in most users, it's extremely hard for newcomers to gain sustainable traction.

yeah but now you have to compete with WhatsApp to get that traction, so maybe a hard slog.

And if FB shut down WhatsApp, users will be looking to go elsewhere, and probably not FB Messenger.