Zuckerberg owns or clones most apps he cites as competition - TomoNews
  • 6 years ago
INTERNET — When asked by Senator Lindsey Graham in testimony in front of the U.S. Senate yesterday if Facebook was a monopoly, Mark Zuckerberg answered by saying the average American uses eight social apps.

What he didn't say was that Facebook owns or has cloned most of these apps.

Citing mobile app insight service App Annie, Techcrunch reports that Facebook owns three of the Top 10 iOS apps in the U.S.: Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook. Those three are the social apps most used by Americans.

And Facebook either has or is working on a similar version of competing social apps. "Stories" is Facebook's latest of several attempts to copy Snapchat. "Watch Video" is being developed to go after YouTube.

Facebook also owns WhatsApp, the 19th most popular iOS app in America.

By selecting the "Social Media" category on App Annie and sorting by the most popular apps, you can clearly see that the top three are owned by Facebook.

This is not a coincidence. Over the years, Facebook has always either bought or sought to copy any emerging social network that challenges its power, Techcrunch reports.

If you're still not sure if Facebook is a monopoly or not, ask yourself this question: If you deleted your Facebook account, could you find all of your friends and family on another social app?

MySpace, anyone?
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