Facebook’s main product has likely peaked, in terms of users and advertising unit economics. The brand is tarnished, it’s not cool for younger people, its value proposition has been heavily eroded by short sighted decisions.
Instagram is doing really well, but by its nature is no substitute for Facebook. It’s too specialised, too narrow a demographic, and doesn’t have the same appeal all round. It can’t pick up the slack from a declining Facebook.
There are real regulatory dangers that Instagram etc will be separated off anyhows.
This is a bet on something that could be big. I’d bet against it working out, but a series of bets like this are probably the best strategy to hedge against decline. We know payments dovetails well with messaging apps (hence perhaps the attempt to unify them, conveniently making it more difficult to break up the company). Payments is a no brainer, the “crypto” spin original but probably irrelevant. For Facebook it does have the advantage of enabling them to accumulate a large fund of “deposits” they can invest.
If the above is right, we should see a few other big bets being placed soon.