Facebook will Accelerate Blockchain Adoption
Facebook is hiring employees for Blockchain initiative
The future of blockchain is still mysterious, there’s simply so much going on. Don’t let the blockchain hype fool you, we’re still in very early days where mainstream adoption only occurs in the decade ahead.
With Facebook’s massive pivot into becoming an in app communications & privacy leader, a lot of this will depend on the blockchain. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Facebook is hiring for blockchain positions.
As of early March sources spotted at least 20 new positions:
Facebook Vacancies for Blockchain Division
· Two Product Managers for different locations
· Community Media & Web Manager
· Business Operations Manager
· Growth Product Manager
· Software Engineer
· Threat Investigator
· Technology Communications Director
· Data Engineer
· Qualitative UX Researcher
· Quantitative UX Researcher
· Data Scientist
· Brand Marketing Manager
· Software Engineer
· Two Mixed Methods UX Researchers also for two different locations
· Security Engineer — Threat Detection and Response
· Brand Strategy and Insights Manager
· Product Designer.
Facebook is thus showing an era where centralized Blockchain acceleration in adoption will significantly change the future of cryptoeconomics that is starting to intersect with payments.
Facebook recently hired the researchers from University College London behind blockchain startup Chainspace.
While it appears Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook’s apps to centralize in a privacy conscious ecosystem somewhat like everything-app WeChat, that’s the complete opposite of its open-sharing 3rd party data sharing model that made it so profitable with digital ads up until now. Analysts and the public are extremely skeptical.
For Facebook’s reputation to be salvaged it will have to invest hard in blockchain to improve trust in its commitment to privacy. I’d even go so far to say that it’s crucial to its future business model.
Facebook’s Future is the Blockchain (not privacy itself per se)
In a recent blog post on Facebook, Facebook’s CEO detailed how he plans to make Facebook upgraded: A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking.This happens to be the specialty of distributed ledger technology and blockchain’s incredible performance enhancement merging public and private networks and making transactions more efficient.
With this narrative of PR impacting the future of technology, the enterprise adoption of blockchain will be stimulated not just for the tech but for branding benefits of adopting the tech that’s popular among Millennials and younger consumers.
The pivot to privacy as Mark Zuckerberg’s trump card is seen widely as an empty pledge, considering what we now know about Facebook’s M.O. The truth is Facebook will never be WeChat and it will never give fair value back to consumers for the data it harvests actively from them (whether or not they are “Facebook users”).
Still Facebook may play a considerable role in accelerating enterprise adoption of blockchain solutions and centralized stablecoins. The fact that both a bank (JP Morgan) and a major tech company are both taking this approach is no coincidence. The future is subscriptions and private business ecosystems and thus the future of blockchain is private, not public blockchains.
Friending Blockchain is The Reality of the “Pivot to Privacy”
Instagram will be hacked for the 2020 elections and WhatsApp for all of its active users hasn’t been monetized well. With Blockchain both of these things could eventually change.
The future of blockchain technology no longer depends on Bitcoin or even the future of cryptocurrencies. It depends on adoption in the cloud and by leading apps and the kind of R&D the likes of Alibaba, Huawei and Facebook are doing with it among others.
It’s simply fascinating then to see Facebook’s careers website now lists 20 job openings related to the technology in a wide range of areas, including: technology communications director, threat investigator, data scientist, two product managers and a product designer, brand strategy and marketing managers, community, media and web manager, engineers, various UX researchers and other roles (Coindesk).
We must applaud all progress whether private or public, centralized or decentralization, in the end the markets will decide the innovation that’s truly disruptive. If Facebook gets this wrong, it could jeopardize its future in advertising. If it gets it right — it could kill cryptocurrency tokens as we know them.
