Don’t really know who is in charge for the business strategies of Facebook but one thing I know for sure is that Facebook Messenger split decision was a wrong decision. And here is why.

Forcing Facebook users to go to another app is not a pleasant experience for the users. They were happy using Facebook chat as part of their Facebook experience. And when these people wanted to text a friend, they would simply switch to Whatsapp (over 500 million users) and do the texting over there. Same technology, almost the same interface and very similar experience. With this aggressive and risky move, what Facebook is telling to its users is that, do not go to Whatsapp to text your friend and use the messenger instead. I do not know about you folks but I think $19 billion dollars is a LOT OF money. That is why we keep asking ourselves as Team Socialeyes, “why on earth pay $19 bn, and then try to destroy your own product?” In marketing there is a term for this. It is called cannibalization meaning that Facebook is hurting its own investment by another product that they own.

The correct way to approach this competition could have been like this: Do not spend $19 bn and then make the Facebook Messenger split decision. This Facebook Messenger split decision is a very aggressive and risky move and therefore it does not make sense to apply both strategies at the same time. Why acquire the hottest product on the market and then create competition against it in a way that will cause unhappiness among its current Facebook users. A marketing strategy professor once said, “The worst strategy is to have many strategies at the same time.” In other words, Facebook applies two different strategies at the same time and they do not go well together.

The recent research showed that the majority of young Facebook users are abandoning the brand for good due to its recent moves in the market. They are not happy with the way Facebook has become over the past few years. The product changed many times and most of the time they were not brilliant user interface changes such as timeline. Or any other change you can think of. Lots of ads, bad treatment to user, almost zero customer support, lots of changes in algorithms for fan pages…

Very soon, Facebook will start forcing their users to download and use Facebook Messenger. Let’s wait and see what the outcomes will be. Are you also against the split decision, or do you think Facebook is doing the right thing by Messenger? We would love to hear your opinion, mail us at support@socialeyesapp.com or tweet @socialeyesapp