The Americans continue the ascension, and the world is doing nothing but watching. While China is giving them a real fight, other global citizens are simply recording America just as I am doing. Yes, Facebook is now a trillion dollar company. It joins Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to hit that mountaintop which Saudi Aramco also boasts of; PetroChina had an effervescence therein a few years ago. Of course, you can get two $trillions in both Apple and Microsoft since they have also recently hit $2 trillions.
Facebook has joined the ranks of companies valued over a trillion dollars as of today’s market close. The company’s market cap is sitting at $1.008 trillion according to Yahoo Finance, putting it over the mark for the first time in its history.
Some of the most notable of Facebook’s divisions are the Facebook site itself, along with Messenger, as well as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. On the list of US tech companies that have passed the $1 trillion valuation mark, Facebook is the only one founded in the 2000s, making it the newest — as long as you’re counting from the date that Google was started (which was in 1998), instead of Alphabet (which was created 2015).
The news comes alongside the dismissal of the FTC’s case to unwind Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, after a federal judge stated that the FTC did not offer enough evidence that the company is a monopoly.
In Nigeria, specifically, the most important Facebook Inc product is WhatsApp. That is followed by Facebook and when you look at all of them, you will see that Nigeria is a Facebook Inc nation with Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook under the command of one company.
As you look at the impact of Facebook Inc in Nigeria, one thing is evident: Twitter might have annoyed the government, but Facebook is eating many piles in markets. I was discussing with a company Board yesterday on the difficulties they were having in their merchant tool, and quickly reminded them that everything began to slow down immediately WhatsApp arrived at scale. In other words, WhatsApp is disintermediating many solutions at scale and today, it is the most important digital product in Africa. Many run schools on WhatsApp! Who cares for a customer support tool when there is WhatsApp? Indeed, can you imagine a sales system without WhatsApp in Africa? If they add payment to WhatsApp, a new dimension of asymmetric competitive force will evolve.
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And in politics, the most divisive tool today in Nigeria is WhatsApp: those groups are mean. If they remember you, you are a toast. Arewa, Igbo, Yoruba, etc are congregating on WhatsApp and group-herding hatred at scale. Look at the plot below – 93% of Internet uses in Nigeria use WhatsApp! That tells you how valuable the solution has become.
Now, add Instagram which is the largest showroom in Africa, muting many ecommerce players and you will see why Facebook ascension to $2 trillion is just a matter of time. Today, there is no person with broadband Internet access in Africa who does not use a Facebook Inc product at least once a week. That makes it the most impactful company in Africa in the emerging digital world!
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Quite a handful. Whatsapp is an enclosed platform, and as people congregate on those small enclaves, they can hatch and bake all manner of things there.
We can only watch and salivate at what American Big Techs are doing, it’s not like we are in a race with them anyway; the best we can is to see how we can leverage on what they have built and create some spectacular things for own people.
The struggle for relevance continues…
Can’t we build one for the continent?