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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

Meta already knew Facebook would sink someday. As they have Instagram, they don't care and Meta will be around for another 10 years to extract more from Instagram and their other unused platforms.

I'd expect the hype and growth around TikTok to peak once their parent company IPOs, as more corporations, advertisers, mainstream media accounts, move in to the platform to ruin it just like they did with the rest of the other social networking platforms, especially for YouTube and Instagram.

If they don't IPO soon, TikTok will get much worse for their users. Either way, the users will eventually get annoyed by TikTok's changes, pushed and boosted by the company.

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> once their parent company IPOs, as more corporations, advertisers, mainstream media accounts, move in to the platform to ruin it j

> If they don't IPO soon, TikTok will get much worse for their users

So, if they IPO TikTok gets worse and if they don't TikTok gets worse? I don't see why bringing up an IPO matters.

Meanwhile, it seems unlikely they'll IPO soon if ever. They apparently raised a 2 billion round in December 2020, and they won't want to IPO in a recession. And IPOing is going to be a political act, and if I were them I would hesitate to incur the CCP's wrath.

>Facebook would sink someday

That day is very far into the future (in tech terms). 1.96 billion users are a whole fucking lot of a base to bleed. I would bet actual money that they won't dip below 1 billion by 2035, and that they would be still there (in whatever profitable form) with the same trademak in 2050.

> That day is very far into the future (in tech terms). 1.96 billion users are a whole fucking lot of a base to bleed. I would bet actual money that they won't dip below 1 billion by 2035, and that they would be still there (in whatever profitable form) with the same trademak in 2050.

While I broadly agree with you, I'd only bet money depending on the odds the bookie is giving, and I wouldn't bet on 1:1 odds either.

The reason is because those timescales are a full generation away. Since the entire value of FB is in the social network of people, it's possible that the upcoming generations bypass FB altogether for a competitor, and FB is unable to risk the pivot[1].

[1] FB might have to intentionally discard the aging existing users for the new users if the featureset that the new users want is exclusive with the featureset that the old users want.

And that explains why they have another separate 1 billion+ monthly active users on Instagram?

If they didn't think their main product would decline or get unpopular soon, why would they bet on spending $1B on buying Instagram before anyone else and copy the greatest hits and main features found in other competitors (Stories, Disappearing posts, etc) directly into Instagram first?

Without Instagram, Facebook would likely have sunk much faster and I already said they will be around for 10+ years.

So the death of Meta Platforms has been greatly exaggerated.

Why would ByteDance IPO?

Specifically to cash out at peak hype.

To make even more money

You don't raise almost $10 billion dollars for a steady, stable lifestyle business. You raise almost $10 billion dollars to reach a liquidity event that pays it back to the investors with a huge profit.

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