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Facebook's Nuclear Advantage - MUST READ!

By Mark Zuckerberg’s own admission, Facebook is now a mobile company. It used to be a website. Now, first and foremost, it’s a collection of apps.

To cope with this new reality, Facebook is now willing to carve itself into countless smaller pieces, to experiment again with anonymity, and to aggressively pursue, to the tune of billions of dollars, any other company that’s stealing smartphone users’ attention. “In order to make these things really be able to reach their full potential,” Mark Zuckerberg told TechCrunch, “I do think over time we’re going to have to create more specific experiences.” It’s been called the Great Unbundling — Facebook, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, is bracing for a post-Facebook world.

This is a natural process for any large tech company — if Microsoft or Apple had never branched out, they might not still exist — but the universe in which Facebook operates is fast moving and unforgiving. Facebook, specifically, is on the prowl for the next big smartphone app, whether it comes from inside the building or not.

What Facebook hasn’t talked about in its anniversary press tour is its secret weapon: At the end of last year, it quietly acquired, for over $100 million, a small Israeli firm called Onavo. The deal was announced and covered at face value: Onavo makes a popular app that cuts down on smartphone data use, and made compression technology that Facebook could use for its new Internet.org initiative, which aims to expand internet access around the world.

But in the months leading up to its acquisition, Onavo had transformed from a data-compression company into a startlingly effective analytics firm. Put bluntly, it had developed the only service that could identify, with precision, how many people were using almost any iOS app...

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/facebooks-nuclear-advantage