It's pretty interesting that FAANG doing venture capital is basically like legal insider trading. They clearly have data on web traffic, consumer usage, advertising spend, etc. that other VC firms and investors generally don't have access to. They can use this to understand entire markets, see who the incumbents are, estimate revenue/users, see who's up-and-coming, etc. Obviously within some margin of error. I wonder…
Expect Google Ventures instead. If you're a Facebook / Google / Microsoft exec it is extremely lucrative to get shares in a company (sometimes as an advisor, sometimes as an investor) then acquire it through the giant company you work for. A lot of Microsoft execs were newly minted millionaires with the LinkedIn acquisition; a lot of Google execs had the same with Nest. Dell, HP, Oracle, VMWare... execs do this all the time.
Lemme give you a broader perspective on, "Company does thing with its money with complex economics and risks outside of its primary source of revenue." These giant companies all have charitable foundations. If you're a main line employee, you want to donate something, your company will match it, it uses an outside contractor to vet the charity, it doesn't do any of that stuff for YOUR main line employee charitable contribution.
You're an exec, you get 10-100x the donation matching benefit as the main line employee, and for some reason it's done through the foundation. Which goes to your family's charity. Run by your wife and kids.
A lot of this stuff boils down to, "executive compensation plans." It's everywhere! The Overstock CEO's ICO scheme was insane. Normal people just buy back stock you know? But it's gotta be creative, take people by surprise.
Some exec had to be motivated to do this and they're going to be motivated by their own personal money. No different than a VC. It doesn't mean that just because it's Facebook and not some VC firm they'll do any better. My expectation is they'll do a lot worse in both economic and accounting terms. The scheme will depend too much on Facebook being the acquirer in the long term so prices will be way inflated and insiders will be too incentivized to buy trash.