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Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

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Re: Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

#2

Post by Alupis »

Seems odd, that a big payment service's exec would get poached to head-up a chat service (likely implemented using XMPP).

I mean, if FB was serious about chat, wasn't there an exec at a chat-focused company that would have been a better fit?

Also, why would the President of PayPal leave (his Top-dog position) to take on a head of a mere department at another company? Also seems odd...

Re: Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

#3

Post by simonk »

Alupis wrote: post #2

Seems odd, that a big payment service's exec would get poached to head-up a chat service (likely implemented using XMPP). I mean, if FB was serious about chat, wasn't there an exec at a chat-focused company that would have been a better fit? Also, why would the President of PayPal leave (his Top-dog position) to take on a head of a mere department at another company? Also seems odd...

Did you see what his old company did? Payments through mobile phones.

Re: Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

#4

Post by Alupis »

simonk wrote: post #3
Alupis wrote: post #2

Seems odd, that a big payment service's exec would get poached to head-up a chat service (likely implemented using XMPP). I mean, if FB was serious about chat, wasn't there an exec at a chat-focused company that would have been a better fit? Also, why would the President of PayPal leave (his Top-dog position) to take on a head of a mere department at another company? Also seems odd...

Did you see what his old company did? Payments through mobile phones.

Yes I did... but that is still not a chat business.

Twitter, WhatsApp, SnapChat... all their executives would have been more of a natural fit.

Re: Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

#6

Post by gohrt »

Alupis wrote: post #4
simonk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see what his old company did? Payments through mobile phones.

Yes I did... but that is still not a chat business. Twitter, WhatsApp, SnapChat... all their executives would have been more of a natural fit.

You are making a very superficial judgment.

If you want to copy WhatApp, there are many options. If you want someone to invent something next-gen...

Re: Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

#8

Post by boomzilla »

Alupis wrote: post #4
simonk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see what his old company did? Payments through mobile phones.

Yes I did... but that is still not a chat business. Twitter, WhatsApp, SnapChat... all their executives would have been more of a natural fit.

Meaning FB is getting into payment, or some sort of credit transferring via the Messenger app. I am actually surprised it took this long for FB to revive the doomed FB credit service. I mean, by now FB probably has more info about many people than banks and debt collectors.

Re: Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

#9

Post by mcintyre1994 »

It's interesting that according to the FT article mentioned [0] the license is for Europe - and they're talking with UK payments companies. I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK I don't imagine a lot of interest - payments are easy by bank transfer. Paying to other European countries isn't great via the banks, I imagine most people use something like Paypal now. But I don't think international payments are likely to be a big part of Facebook realistically.

The license is apparently valid throughout Europe though so maybe other countries have poorer bank transfer systems and this would be better.

[0] It's paywalled, so techcrunch discussion: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/facebook-emoney-whatsapp-re... , FT article : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e0ef050-c16a-11e3-97b2-00144feabd... , google search for it (dodges paywall) : https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=facebook+targets+financial...

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