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Comment by curiousllama | Hacker News Reader

A few long term bull arguments:

- They have the worlds largest messaging platform (WhatsApp) that is basically unmonetized rn.

- They are one of 3-5 major players in AI. Amazon was one of the 3-5 largest internet companies... and then created AWS. (e.g., they released-then-unreleased a GPT3 clone before ChatGPT, because they got slammed in the press for ethics. doesn't mean they can't build a B2B business with it.)

- The regulatory landscape is shifting towards tech nationalism. Yea, there'll be regulation, but nationalism will limit the scope + create a moat against upstarts.

Recessions are great times to build new businesses - if you have cash on hand. They have cash.

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It's not clear it's even possible to effectively monetize pure messaging platforms like WhatsApp - there aren't many successful examples of highly monetized chat apps. Chat is pretty much the hardest thing in all of social networking to monetize and there is no guarantee Facebook can effectively monetize WhatsApp without sabotaging its primary purpose (communication). IMO there is a reason WhatsApp is still basically unmonetized right now.

How does Facebook stand to monetize from AI? AWS and Google monetize through their cloud offerings, but Facebook went the library/framework route with PyTorch. That seems like a big question mark if they can capitalize on AI in some form outside of their own internal systems (like ad optimization and general monetization/product improvements, which everyone is doing at the same time).

They have a ton of cash, but can they effectively use it? They are burning a lot of it on VR which isn't catching on the way they envisioned. Facebook is at a point where they are already huge so to maintain 'growth stock' valuations they have to keep delivering quarter over quarter results that move the needle in the billions and billions of dollars. I don't see a compelling case for them to do that based on these pillars.

> It's not clear it's even possible to effectively monetize pure messaging platforms like WhatsApp

Well, WhatsApp is moving beyond "pure" messaging with payments and commerce (Eg: JioMart integration in India).

Another approach would be to compare with wechat with 1.2 billion active users generating an estimated 15+ Billion in revenue in 2021 (https://www.businessofapps.com/data/wechat-statistics/) without much North America / EU presence and being banned in India.

Thirdly, click to message ads are already a "multi-billion dollar" business with "strong double digit growth" as of 2022 (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/07/why-meta-and-mark-zuckerberg...)

I don't know if we can draw much from the comparison to WeChat.

WeChat is effectively an operating system for the domestic Chinese economy within a single app, it's 10-100x more complex than a messaging app, and it enjoys official blessing that WhatsApp would never obtain in any market. You can hardly survive in China without WeChat, it's so tightly integrated into everyday life.

They could monetize AI by using it to boost their own properties.

For instance they could replace human content moderators, which is costing them billions. Maybe offer some "Meta premium" which summarizes and lets you ask questions about your WhatsApp, messenger chats. Perhaps improve ad targeting by understanding user post content better?

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