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Has Facebook Won?

Posted August 14, 2017
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On Friday, another one bit the dust. As Snap's shares plunged following disappointing results, it became clear that the myth that a feisty young challenger to Facebook could topple the social media giant from its perch was just that - a myth.

Of course, the company behind Snapchat is still a very impressive young business, building an audience of 173 million mostly young daily users in just five years and changing the way they communicate, in fun and inventive ways.

But its future as an independent company looks uncertain, with talk of it being swallowed up by Google or another web giant.

The deep pockets of Facebook, which bought Instagram and WhatsApp, and has relentlessly copied any challenger it couldn't buy, meant that Snap was always going to struggle to deliver on the vision of rapid growth it outlined when marketing its shares earlier this year.

And that just adds to the growing sense that the days of creative destruction in the technology industry may be over, and that we are looking at a world where the big winners of the past decade - Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, or "Gafa" as this four-headed beast is sometimes described - will rule unchallenged.

Read the full article here.

 


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