Keep a watch on Facebook's plans

Its ambition to be like WeChat is frightening prospect

Facebook, the social networking site, not the company that owns Instagram, WhatsApps, etc - is not as big it once was. It may have hit its Myspace or Orkut moment, where its relevance in the everyday life of its user has dwindled, and it has not been able to attract the attention of the younger people; Of course, it has other assets for the younger users of social media; Instagram ably fills the slot. But the facebook itself is no longer the most important assest that facebook has. That, on top of the heavy dent in its reputation over the past two years, beginning from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, has led facebook - the company - to pivot on its business strategy. Facebook now wants to be the new WeChat.

For the uninitiated, Tencent;s WeChat is the New York Times has called the " swiss army knife " of apps. In China, WeChat has taken over everything, from social networking and messaging to e-commerce, from gaming to ride sharing, amd from booking a doctor's appointment to booking travel tickets. People no longer share business cards, instead simply scan their WeChat Quick Responce ( QR ) codes; even panhandelers have WeChat QR codes through which people can give them money. It is this ubiquity that facebook is now after. it aims to be more than an app; it wants to be the ecosystem. This ambition was visible in facebook's attempt to become the entire internet in some countries with their Free Basics or Internet.org platform. through this, there was an attempt to create a wallet garden of sorts that would have allowed access to certain websites and services. But this was defeated in India through public action calling for net neutrality.

While it's ambitious, it files in the face of competition laws and the need to resist the formation of one massive corporation that runs everything in a given sector. Even in countries such as India where there are large number of people who do not yet get their news online, messaging apps such as WhatsApp have become the primary source of news and information, fake or otherwise, Founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a blog post, admitted that facebook hadn't done the best job with privacy so far, but now sees that " the future is private ". As they work toward introducing Snapchat-style ephemeral messaging, this could mean a reduction in regulation. Add to that plans to launch their owns cryptocurrency and already having ownership of WhatsApp, Facebook;s new business strategy requires close monitoring.