Copy, Divide & Rule: Facebook’s fight against Snap
First, it appeared on Instagram.
Then, on WhatsApp.
More recently, on Messenger.
It is clear that Facebook blatantly copied Snapchat’s Stories feature to all its most important mobile apps. Also, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that Facebook is trying hard to attack Snap Inc., the company that owns Snapchat, and limit its long-term growth. In this titan’s fight, there are some interesting product strategy trends to be seen.
Bundling & Unbundling
Back in 2014, there was a new buzzword in use: unbundling. Tech companies, like Facebook, started to separate functionalities in their apps to create new stand-alone and focused mobile apps.
You might remember when Zuckerberg decided that you should download Messenger to talk privately with your Facebook friends.
Or when Foursquare said your check-ins would work on the Swarm App (I won’t even get started on that). Separating features seemed to be the trend.
Now, Facebook — which performed the biggest instance of unbundling — is now showing a curious trend in their products. Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram are adding more features to their platforms and stacking core interactions to them. Moreover, these mobile apps are starting to look alike.
The similarities are strong even between Messenger and WhatsApp: two mobile messaging apps for private communication with media sharing, voice and video call, group chats, desktop versions, phone number connection and so forth. The list of similar features could increase even more.
It might be said that Facebook is only trying to adapt to a new trend: people are moving away from broadcasting and registering their personal thoughts and life updates permanently, and towards a more ephemeral and personalized way to share content online. That doesn’t entirely explain Facebook’s motivation, though.
Copy, paste and release to the masses
Of course, I can’t tell for sure what Facebook’s strategy is. But there is a public competition between this social network platform giant and Snap Inc. When the Stories-like feature came to Instagram, it was a clear copy of the ephemeral updates and messages from Snapchat. There can be no doubt about that.
Despite the quality of the new version of Instagram, the power of Facebook’s strategy is not in how good the copy is. When compared with the enormous user base Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have, Snapchat looks like a small fish. The chart below makes it very clear:
By offering the novelty of ephemeral updates (it is a novelty at least to the general public) on Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger, what Facebook is doing is:
a) commoditizing Snapchat’s feature and
b) letting their huge user base try “Stories” without even bothering to download a new app or build a new network little by little.
This way, they can avoid migration.
Is this a David vs. Goliath fight?
Snap Inc. went public recently and now has to justify its 20+ billion dollar valuation, as well as keep up the exponential growth of its user base and revenue. Having Stories copied to Facebook’s products is a concern, and people from Snap have already expressed annoyance.
Snap is yet to show how they are going to overcome this type of competition, though. It’s that, or they face the risk of having the same fate as Twitter.
As David Kirkpatrick demonstrates in “The Facebook Effect,” Mark Zuckerberg and his team have mastered the network phenomenon and achieved the critical mass to build the global, ubiquitous company and social network platform that Facebook is today. With such a position and global penetration, Facebook is trying to impose a plateau for Snapchat growth sooner rather than later.
In this fight, Goliath is employing all available weapons to limit the growth of competitors, including throwing rocks at David.
