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Zuckerberg is Sitting on More Data About What People Want To Do Online Than Anyone Else in the World, Former Facebook Chief Security Officer Says (cnbc.com)
Former Facebook executive Alex Stamos explained how Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is able to consistently make decisions that only make sense with the benefit of hindsight. From a report: "Mark Zuckerberg is sitting on more data about what people want to do online than anyone else in the world," said Stamos, who was speaking at the Washington Post's technology and policy conference on Wednesday evening. He cited the acquisitions of private messaging WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion, and photo-sharing service Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, as examples of bets "that people think are insane but turn out to be prophetic because he knows the direction the world is going," Stamos said. Further reading: Facebook Used Its VPN App To Track Competitors, Documents Reveal.
I think that those overlords would like to have everyone think that they know more about you than they really do. Even more so, they'd like their paying customers to think the same.
But yes, they do have access to lots of data on us all.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
What a crock. I was forced to use WhatsApp while I was working on a project a while back. We all knew it was connected to Facebook, didn't want anything connected with them on our phones, and tried to suggest an alternative (Signal was what we lobbied for at the time) but were told "Management has spoken". As soon as the contract ended, everyone I worked closely with on the project deleted it. As for Instagram: what a time sink that is. If that's where the world's going, we're all in it. Deep.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I bet there's a lot of people who would like him to take all that data he's sitting on and shove it ... you get the idea.
Leave the android alone. It's just trying to understand human emotion.
Some were saying that paying billions for a messaging service and a photo thingy, which weren't making any money and had no real idea how to monetize their service, was insane. Others understood that the Zuck wasn't paying for the service, but for eyeballs. Not exactly a new concept, but (according to some) he overpaid, by quite a bit. You might say that the "prophetic" part is that Facebook understood that those services were worth a lot more to them than to themselves or to others. It's like buying Boardwalk when you already own Park Place in Monopoly, and you're ready to stick some hotels on those suckers.
FB could have easily duplicated the Instagram and WhatsApp services themselves, and current FB users would have flocked to them... but would they have been able to win over the non-faceBook customers? Especially with Instagram and WhatsApp already out there? There's still plenty of #deletefacebook-ers with a burning hatred for everything Zuckerberg owns, but still find it very hard to completely do away with WhatsApp.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Facebook knows how you want everyone to see you.
Google knows what you really desire.