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Comment by kozhevnikov | Hacker News Reader

Have there been any major Facebook flops? They seem to be very successful in acquiring (WhatsApp, Instagram) and diversifying (Facebook Messenger, Instagram Stories) the next social thing. They are no Yahoo or, on occasion, Microsoft.

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Maybe not a major flop, but Facebook’s original TikTok competitor, Lasso, was shut down. They tried to go after the Musical.ly half of TikTok’s user base that likes dancing to music.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut...

Facebook are smart. They are well aware of the changes in the social network sphere and the fact that pretty much every single platform at some point starts loosing customer base because they move on to the new ones. So as long as Facebook keeps buying the ones whilst pulling billions in progress, they are fine.

Moments, Poke, Camera are a few. Local could be huge if they had the right strategy.

Facebook keeps putting this bizarre emphasis on stamping their brand on everything they come up with to keep their brandname relevant.

Sounds more like Facebook should restructure as a holding company and keep creating independent concepts to see what succeeds, but keeping the Facebook name is likely an ego-driven decision.

When they sponsored ‘The Last Dance’ on ESPN, they referred to themselves as The Facebook Company. I thought that was interesting.

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