This article is vastly more informative:<p><a href="https://www.recode.net/2018/5/8/17330226/facebook-reorg-mark-zuckerberg-whatsapp-messenger-ceo-blockchain" rel="nofollow">https://www.recode.net/2018/5/8/17330226/facebook-reorg-mark...</a><p>This is part of a major reorg. David is on the board of Coinbase, which could explain his interest, but by any reading he’s getting much less responsibility (going from 1B daily actives to 0)
I remember when I interned for PayPal, one of my first exposures to corporate communication was an all company email from David Marcus, where he mentioned that he had seen PayPal employees not paying with PayPal at places on the corporate campus that accepted PayPal, and he suggested that they should find other jobs.
What purpose does a company with a centralized service have for "blockchain". Apparently even tech leaders have no idea what they're talking about.
What you have to understand is that Facebook is effectively the defacto global identity system. Russian bots and astroturfing aside, it's still the most widely used and deployed identity verification service around that is borderless and not government controlled.<p>Yes, they don't have penetration in every country in the world (i.e. in China). But they effectively own identity services in the Western world. For blockchains, one of the key gaps in adoption is validating and verifying real users.<p>If I'm one of the blockchain startups doing identity verification such as Civic or Status, I'd be very worried right now that the 500 pound gorilla is getting into the game.
I am the first person to admire the solution to Byzantine Generals but to wonder what Blockchain can do that a centralised system can. However, Marcus knows that very well -- so I suspect the move corresponds to a core strategic shift for the company. Some use cases that would make sense:<p>- allow Facebook users to pay each other using BitCoin & Co.(certainly the key feature as Messenger killer and under-utilised feature is its payment option, and Markus’ past at PayPal)<p>- allow Ethereum & Co. to leverage Facebook Identity (for instance, define “someone” as an active Facebook account with at least 50 active friends, the way I believe Tinder does) for their contracts;<p>- find a way to run a Facebook-compatible version of Mastodon/Diaspora/etc. off Smart contracts, allowing privacy-conscious individuals to host their social media-like experience on a platform compatible with Facebook but without a identifiable central repository or hard to maintain decentralised structure.<p>Only the last one is something that would make Marcus excited enough to leave Messenger. The first one is a Hackathon idea, the second probably a project that makes sense once Ethereum (for all its merits) has more compelling use case than a cat-collectibles to its name.
Has Messenger caught up to (or aiming to catch up to) wechat in terms of functionality and scope yet? I remember a lot of hubub about bots and conversational commerce.
The best way to think of this may be that Mark and the executives at FB are like a VC firm funding a new skunkworks project in a high-risk, high-reward category. Let's say there is a 10% chance that blockchain ends up being incredibly relevant to the future of social networks. It would make sense for FB to make what amounts to a seed investment in the space, knowing that it could very likely not amount to anything.
Seems him and Jan were at odds about how to integrate Messenger with WhatsApp.<p>Jan leaves with some bombastic statement seeming to indicate he’s gonna go start a new messaging venture.<p>Now the head of Facebook’s other messaging property leaves less than a month a later for a crypto startup.
So the head of "encrypted messaging" at Facebook is now on a "this will go down on your permanent blockchain record" project. WCPGW???
Facebook working on a blockchain project sounds as much in the public interest as Microsoft in the mid 90s trying to build MSN, their own version of the WWW.