The recently-announced melding of Facebook apps  is the largest consolidation of potential influence in history.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to build a mega-monopoloy, the world’s biggest telco company.

By aggregating all their platforms – WhatApp, Instagram, Facebook – Facebook will be able to circumvent anti-trust problems (if all their apps are glued together how a regulator break them up?)

Facebook’s new currency – “coin” – is designed to help users buy stuff on Facebook messaging with just a double click.  Facebook hopes “Coin” will make them the world’s biggest bank.

But something else is going on. The fact is, Facebook’s current model – the main business – is weakening. Or put another way, social media is kinda fucked.

Facebook wants to be Chinese messaging giant WeChat. By going all in on messaging, Facebook won’t have to mediate public content which is all but impossible at scale.

Facebook’s pivot to messaging is a tacit acknowledgement that it is simply impossible to moderate one billion newsfeeds. It can’t be done. In that sense, social media as a mega-business is finished.

Posted in: Infographic of the day