Facebook's takeover of Instagram does not help development strategy

Tencent Science and Technology music November 12 compiled social networking Facebook buys photo-sharing services Instagram looks like a good deal. But it doesn't really fit Facebook's development strategy. When it was acquired by Facebook in April 2012, the number of Instagram users was only 30 million; now, 18 months later, it has more than 150 million users. It's natural to associate itself with Google's acquisition of YouTube, which has been growing in popularity since it was acquired at the end of 2006. But the difference is that YouTube is already the dominant network video-sharing platform, and Instagram is far from being the dominant mobile photo-sharing platform. Facebook's latest statistics show that the number of photos posted on Instagram is 55 million a day, while Facebook publishes 450 million photos a day. But, relatively speaking, photo-sharing applications Snapchat 450 million photos per day, and 400 million photos are posted on WhatsApp daily. Moreover, we do not know how many photos are posted daily on line, WeChat or many other similar services. At the same time, Instagram has 55 million active users each month, while the number of WhatsApp users reaches 350 million. Also, there are many other similar services that publish more photos each day than Instagram. As a result, Facebook's acquisition of Instagram does not address the development strategy it faces. It buys only one of many mobile social products, and not the biggest. All of these new services sprang up because smartphones have eliminated Facebook's insurmountable hurdles to desktop PCs: 0 smartphone address books are social maps that all applications can use; 0 smartphone photo gallery for all applications; 0 The smartphone message push function eliminates the hassle of consulting multiple Web sites; 0 Smart phone main screen icon switching is more convenient than switching between different sites. People do not use Instagram to send photos, use WhatsApp to send text messages, use line to release small stickers. Instead, they may use any service to do anything. For example, use Instagram to inform others that you are late, share holiday photos with WhatsApp, arrange evening activities with Snapchat, and so on. WhatsApp and Instagram are not very different services, they are direct competitors, competing for users ' time and attention. Instagram, Snapchat, line, and all other services provide users with a variety of options that allow them to perform various social activities. It's not a surprise.Thing: We have three social applications on our phones, including voice, text, and email. And we're not going to die from the hard work of using just what app. New apps just add more choices to us. Of course, the acquisition of Instagram is also a good deal-if you buy it today, Instagram may not be the same price. But the move by Facebook to buy Instagram now seems to be inconsistent with its development strategy. Will Facebook continue to buy WhatsApp, Snapchat, line, Kakao and other similar services? Admittedly, some of these services will eventually disappear, but Facebook is unlikely to beat one competitor on top of another, as on a desktop computer. In the Mobile world, Facebook has become so much more. Perhaps the best thing for Facebook is to rethink and build its core products, rather than buying a service that doesn't stand out. This is reminiscent of another famous takeover: Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr. There was a time when AOL and Yahoo were keen to buy new internet services because their portals were under threat. Later, due to mismanagement, many of these internet services were forced to shut down. But that's not the point. The point is that no matter how good they are at acquisitions, they cannot always acquire the best websites. Facebook certainly can't.