[galoisscobi]

I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company. He pumped a whole bunch of money in VR that didn’t seem to go anywhere and now AI seems like a fine direction to go in, copying the herd, with dangerous disregard to ethics.

[nemothekid]

>I think he’ll be looked back as one hit wonder, lacking any ethics to grow his company.

I can't take this seriously - it reeks of hindsight bias. Zuckerberg's "one hit" was thefacebook.com. After facebook.com went public he, seemingly immediately, decided to buy Instagram and go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobile would come crashing down. We can see, in hindsight, that it was a prescient move - one that many others missed, or were late to. (e.g. Google and Microsoft).

I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg. I understand he's not a likable guy, and neither are are his products. The only facebook product I use is arguably React - I've deactivated my facebook long ago, and I no longer have instagram. I don't even have Whatsapp. But if you look at the metrics they aren't deniable. Facebook figured out how to print money in social media while every other social media company struggles to have a quarter of the profitability. A lot of people point to "he just bought Instagram", without seriously interrogating the fact that many apps have been bought and squandered.

[afavour]

> go all in on mobile. At the time, people thought he had way too much power due to the stock structure and many people thought his bet on mobile would come crashing down

That feels like real revisionist history to me. He was late to mobile. Buying Instagram was the Hail Mary. and yes, it paid off. But a tech company with the resources of Facebook could have been where Google is today with Android if they’d acted at the right moment.

The Instagram purchase was in 2012. Who was still expecting mobile to come crashing down in the iPhone 5 era?

[SamvitJ]

"I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg. I understand he's not a likable guy, and neither are are his products."

Spot on.

[VirusNewbie]

You make interesting points so let's take a more nuanced view of things:

I'll agree Zuck is amazing at spotting large macro trends in technology and capitalizing on them (VR he was a little early at, but I still buy it could be big).

However, he wasn't able to do that with AI, the big companies and startups weren't selling. So the question is, can he build a team? I'm skeptical, he put Alexandr Wang, someone who never built a foundational model in charge of all their AI efforts? It could be a great move, but might also be a swing and a miss.

[galoisscobi]

> I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg.

Depends on your definition of 'performance'. Does it include ethics?

[DoesntMatter22]

Musk has performed an order of magnitude better IMO. Started 7 billion dollar companies, all of which are an order of magnitude harder to manage than Facebook which is a cash cow. Especially Space X which is incredible in what it's been able to do and actually has a positive impact on humanity

[bdangubic]

> I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg.

This is true but similar to saying Adolf Hitler was one of the greatest Commanders in Chief

[atonse]

Agree with you about ethics but it was a master stroke for him to buy both Instagram and WhatsApp.

[herbturbo]

He was just buying users of popular products in lieu of attracting new ones to his own.

Meta has subsequently ruined IG and seems busy working up new ways to ruin WhatsApp.

[simplemts]

100% agree, so many flops right at the top

VR/AR Threads AI

Probably missing some more..

[swader999]

The crypto, Libra/diem was another.

[Nevermark]

Let's not forget the crypto currency project he floated around.

And all the copycat divisions that melted away once the "template" companies he was copying, were bought out.

[ojosilva]

I'd say he's got lucky in the being evil game too, because ethically speaking whatever he does in social and AI is largely overshadowed by Elon Musk's X and Grok.