Facebook, WhatsApp, and world domination→
In the Middle East, Sandvine says, Facebook accounts for 11 percent of mobile traffic. WhatsApp is at 3 percent. And Instagram, also owned by Facebook, tops 10 percent. All told, Zuckerberg and company control nearly a quarter of all traffic in the region. That’s a remarkable stat—and it shows how the company is poised to grab eyeballs across the developing world.
I still can’t tell if WhatsApp is going to be a Big Thing in the US or not. I think it was a bit late – we’ve already got iMessage and Hangouts.1
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Although Google just… doesn’t seem to care about Hangouts, which is a bit depressing because of the amount of market share it’s got is scary.
On the other hand, the reason I stopped using Chrome was because it wouldn’t let me uninstall the Hangouts popup-on-launch extension, so maybe that’s why they haven’t been trying too hard. ↩