In 2014, I was the Chief Business Officer of WhatsApp.
And I helped negotiate the $22 billion sale to Facebook.
Today, I regret it.
Here’s where things went wrong:
WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton.
2 years in (2011), I joined the team as Chief Business Officer.
And in 2012/13, we were approached by Zuck & Facebook about an acquisition.
We declined and decided to keep growing instead.
But then…
Nov 18, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The word “algorithm” has become distorted over the decades.
But social algorithms aren't to blame.
It's engagement features that weaponize them.
Here's how manipulating people's attention has become a product design decision (and why it's a slippery slope) 🧵👇
All social media platforms face the same two big challenges:
• How do we attract users?
• How do we get those users to stick around?
In the early days of social platforms, the way you kept users were you showed them what their friends were Liking, commenting, posting, etc.
Jul 19, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Somewhere along the way, social media went seriously wrong.
• What we post is rarely who we are.
• What we see isn't from people we know.
• What we talk about online isn't what we talk about in private.
Where can we be ourselves?
🧵👇
Social media today is a digital mall.
Blinking red notifications. Infinite scrolling feeds.
Ads. Bots. Likes. Followers. Influencers.
Instead of building tools to bring people together, these tools have torn people apart.
