For the first time in more than half a decade, Facebook wants to inform you that it owns Instagram, the hyper-popular rival social networking app it acquired for a $1BN steal back in 2012.
Ditto messaging platform WhatsApp — which Mark Zuckerberg splurged $19BN on a couple of years later to keep feeding eyeballs into his growth engine.
Facebook is adding its own brand name alongside the other two — in the following format: ‘Instagram from Facebook’; ‘WhatsApp from Facebook.’
The cheap perfume style rebranding was first reported by The Information which cites three people familiar with the matter who told it employees for the two apps were recently notified internally of the plan to rebrand.
“The move to add Facebook’s name to the apps has been met with surprise and confusion internally, reflecting the autonomy that the units have operated under,” it said.
Although it also reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been frustrated that Facebook doesn’t get more credit for the growth of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The accompanying 3,000+ word screed from Zuckerberg introduced the singular notion of “the Facebook network”; aka one pool for users to splash in, three differently coloured slides to funnel you in there.
“In a few years, I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network,” he wrote. “If this evolution is successful, interacting with your friends and family across the Facebook network will become a fundamentally more private experience.”
The ‘from Facebook’ rebranding thus looks like just a little light covering fire for the grand dodge Facebook is hoping to pull off as the break-up bullet speeds down the pipe: Aka Entangling its core businesses at the infrastructure level.
From three networks to one massive Facebook-owned user data pool.
One network to rule them all, one network to find them,
One network to bring them all, and in the regulatory darkness bind them
