Comment by htormey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by htormey | Hacker News Reader

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This is a really good point. I don't think this is necessarily a bad acquisition at all. Onavo is basically Facebooks eye of sauron:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

TBH has been in the top 10 free apps for a few weeks now. FB has a good track record of buying small teams with good engagement numbers and letting them run themselves (Whatsapp/Instagram).

I'm sure Facebook looked at their numbers via Onavo and decided they were on a pretty good trajectory.

Also, it should be noted that TBH doesn't even have an Android app yet.

The question now is will TBH turn out to be more of a draw with friends (flash in the pan game) or have staying power like Bitmoji does.

Bitmoji was purchased by Snap Inc for around 100 million about a year ago. It has managed to consistently stay in the top 10 free apps since then:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/29/snapmoji/

> TBH has been in the top 10 free apps for a few weeks now. FB has a good track record of buying small teams with good engagement numbers and letting them run themselves (Whatsapp/Instagram).

I can't comment on Whatsapp but I don't think this is an accurate description of Instagram. It took them a while, sure, but today they are most definitely asserting their control as overlords of Instagram even if they 'run themselves'.

Oh so how do you know that? Did they publish some article stating a change in control?

Anecdotal: Last Instagram update started giving me notifications from Facebook not related to my Ig posts.

I've never heard of this before, is there an honest review of Onavo out there other than bait for data collection?

We used to use them at a previous job -- they had a data product that would tell you what add networks competitor apps were using, their estimated market share in impressions, and what their ad creative was. Was a very useful research tool for digital marketing.

Does Facebook even need Onavo for that? AFAIK any Android app can check which other apps are installed and the names of all other running processes, with little to no permissions. And since the main Facebook app is installed on most devices they can use that to gather the data. Not sure how accurate it is in comparison, but it definitely has a wider reach.

I guess the point is that owning Onavo gives them access to data about users who specifically are not actively using Facebook -- which is obviously the space where FB would be looking to do defensive acquisitions.

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