The Facebook Company, Inc.

Facebook’s recent spate of acquisitions has drawn comparisons between itself and Disney.

The comparison is a fair one, or at least could be. Consider it this way. The content produced under the Disney branding is no longer the best content the company produces. In fact the best stuff is coming out of Pixar, Marvel and Maker Studios - all part of the The Walt Disney Company, Inc. Disney makes this work as all the companies it acquires are all great content producers and contribute to its core mission.

Now think about Zuck’s mission - to make the world more open and connected. Well nothing there suggests this objective can only be achieved through facebook.com. In fact by acquiring and incubating companies like WhatsApp, Instagram and even Oculus he’s marching on towards that goal.

Clearly it will take a long time for his acquisitions to prove as successful as Disney’s or Google’s, but the company’s recent trajectory has filled me with a little more confidence than it once did. Does that mean I’d invest in FB? No, not until they radically improve their core product and prove they can grow meaningful revenues from their new purchases, but it also means I haven’t written them off entirely just yet.

UPDATE: I’d argue that stories that Zuck has begun the ‘unbundling’ of the core Facebook experience adds further weight to my claims below. It’s not about being the single destination, but being the player in an ecosystem of communication apps.