For Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, one of the most valuable things for a Silicon Valley executive is to go abroad and see the world.
"One of the things that we do is ask product managers to go travel to an emerging-market country to see how people who are getting on the Internet use it," Zuckerberg told the New York Times. "They learn the most interesting things. People ask questions like, ‘It says here I’m supposed to put in my password — what’s a password?’ For us, that’s a mind-boggling thing."
Zuckerberg was deflecting a question about the rising age of Facebook users and loss of teens and young adults. Instead, he said, it's the thing he worries least about and is more concerned with connecting the world.
Perhaps this is why Facebook bought WhatsApp, because Facebook’s messaging platform wouldn't work for a global audience world. While Messenger works better in the West because of mobile infrastructure, WhatsApp will work on older smartphones in developing nations. In short, Facebook's gamble of attracting young people also helped connect the world.
