- That's so Meta
- Posts
- Why WhatsApp Can Surpass Amazon in 10 yrs
Why WhatsApp Can Surpass Amazon in 10 yrs
Mark is obsessed with Telegram but he should be looking at Taobao.
Ahoy Metamates! 🚢 🏴☠️
And welcome to this weeks’ issue of That’s So Meta. This newsletter looks at hard data, Wall Street analyst opinions, interviews with employees and industry competitive data.
No hype, just facts.
🆕 Interesting tidbits this week:
Sandhya Devanathan will lead Meta in India after previous head leaves for SNAP
New VPs of Metaverse and Whatsapp appointed this week- both internal hires
Meta facing legal inquiries for laying folks off during parent leave
Layoffs hit hard but reorgs hit harder as those who are left struggle to find stability internally
Layoffs Spark Mixed Reactions on Wall Street:
Let's look at early opinions published this week:
..a small scale back of spending growth. This could be greater cost discipline or a reaction to a weakening sales trend. We are cautious, retain a NEUTRAL rating, and trim estimates, taking our price target down by $10 to $104.
Folks at BofA are a bit more positive but nonetheless kept price projections the same:
Layoffs exceed expectations
Same story at Wolfe Research - price projection stayed flat:
The magnitude of headcount reductions was larger than our prior expectations, and we view this as a positive signal on profitability
TLDR: looking uncertain so far but the major analysts have yet to chime in and the good news is that the stock has maintained relatively well over the week.
Deep Dive: What’s Up with WhatsApp
It’s an open secret at Meta that a new VP is coming to WhatsApp under Will Cathcart but no one knows who it is yet. Announcements and press around the product are also ramping up, seemingly out of the blue, after years of relative obscurity. Mark himself is involved in announcing new features.
This is a major strategic priority for Meta and the expectation is that it will monetize before the metaverse and rival Amazon.
But all this noise has folks more confused than excited. 🤷♀️
Because, let’s face it, no one really gets how this $19B acquisition will be Instagram-level profitable. It's not super obvious even to people who work there:
"I know [WA] is very prestigious but I'm really not sure why it's so important" - an eng friend at Meta I chatted with last night to dogfood this post.
Let's look at the data together to find out.
In this week’s deep-dive:
Why folks in Brazil flipped out when WhatsApp went down for only 6 hours
WhatsApp and Alibaba's weird cousin relationship
How WA makes money today
Mark & Co are obsessed with Telegram - are they right? Spoiler: no
Learning from the best: Taobao product flow w screenshots
WA Running a grocery store in India?
The People Who Run WhatsApp
Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.
Become a paying subscriber of Premium to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.
Already a paying subscriber? Sign In.
A subscription gets you:
- • ~15 substantial strategy and product deep dives/ year
- • Earnings call stock data and trends
- • Relevant News + Profiles on people to watch at Meta
- • Access to all previous issues