With Blockchain, Facebook May Be Looking to Cut Out Credit Cards
*By Christian Smith*
Facebook announced Tuesday it was creating a blockchain division to be led by a senior executive in what may be an effort by the social media company to develop its own payment system that cuts out credit card companies.
"I would definitely imagine payments is going to be a big part of it," said TechCrunch's Editor-at-Large Josh Constine about Facebook's blockchain initiative. "Facebook's opportunity there is to cut out the credit card companies. Facebook wants to be the new layer for commerce."
When a user makes a purchase through Facebook using a credit card, the customer pays a small percentage or flat fee. Using blockchain technology, Facebook could create its own payment system that would would eliminate the fee and streamline purchases.
The executive who will be in charge of the initiative, David Marcus, previously ran Facebook's Messenger app and was a co-founder of the online payment service PayPal.
Facebook also [announced](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebooks-c-suite-shuffle) Tuesday that its longtime chief product officer, Chris Cox, will oversee Facebook's "family of apps," which include Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Chris Daniels, who led Facebook's Internet.org connectivity efforts, will take the helm at WhatsApp after its co-founder, Jan Koum, announced last week he was leaving the company. Adam Masseri, who runs Facebook's NewsFeed, will take over as Instagram's vice president of product.
When Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, the social media giant promised the leaders of those companies a degree of autonomy. As Facebook installs its own leaders in executive positions over those companies, that autonomy appears to be shrinking. Constine said the decision could affect the way people view Instagram and WhatsApp compared to Facebook.
"WhatsApp and Instagram are kind of the hedges against threats to Facebook's brand. With all the recent Cambridge Analytica scandals, when Facebook was really getting hit with a lot of criticism that didn't necessarily flow over Instagram or WhatsApp," said Constine in an interview Wednesday with Cheddar. "They were sort of the lifeboat for Facebook's brand just in case people started to really hate on the big blue social network."
Constine also said that more closely associating Facebook with Instagram and WhatsApp could end up being a boost to the brands.
"They're going to run essentially the Facebook playbook, which could actually end up being good because Facebook's been quite successful with that playbook," said Constine.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-getting-into-blockchain-as-company-reorganizes).
Apple has taken down an app that uses crowdsourcing to flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents after coming under pressure from the Trump administration.
Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania. And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology in artificial intelligence. Chambers is trying take some of the lessons he learned while riding a wave that turned Cisco into the world's most valuable company in 2000 before a crash hammered its stock price and apply them as an investor in AI startups. He recently discussed AI's promise and perils during an interview with The Associated Press.
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer breaks down Apple & Amazon's latest product drops—what's hot, what's hype, and what really matters for users.
Police in Northern California pulled over a self-driving Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn. But without a driver behind the wheel, they could not issue a moving violation ticket.
With satellites already in orbit, defense contractor L3Harris is standing by to accelerate Trump's executive order. We take an inside look at the technology
Electronic Arts, the video game maker of “Madden NFL,” “The Sims,” and other popular titles, is being acquired and taken private for about $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms.
