While its tie-in with Xiaomi gives it distribution, there is concern over the relationship since Xiaomi absorbs a large chunk of some costs that typically impact standalone competitors, such as marketing and distribution.
But while at Facebook, Flynn and Hamlin worked on the massively succesful 2014 redesign of Messenger, and the standalone Snapchat competitor Slingshot that flopped but pioneered creative tools like variable brush sizes that Facebook later integrated elsewhere.
TechCrunch has learned, and confirmed, that Alibaba is calling it a day on operating 11 Main, its U.S.-based Amazon competitor, as a standalone operation.
Last year, documents leaked to TechCrunch revealed that Facebook was working on a competitor to Instagram — a standalone app where you could filter, publish, and browse photos.
However, unlike competitors that exist primarily as standalone apps, the London startup (for now, at least) has decided to bet big on Facebook Messenger.
It's a web-based client that should help it keep up with the stickiness of competitors like Facebook and its standalone Facebook Messenger.
"As a standalone app Dingo is designed for mobile versus competitors who are playing catch up on mobile.
MySpace TV will operate as a standalone service and is being billed as a direct competitor to YouTube.
Are the margins for services in the cloud strong enough to support lots of standalone businesses, or will we see others, such as Lettuce competitor Stitch Labs, also go the M&A route in the long run?
The new additions should help position Messenger as a more fully formed Telegram competitor, as Facebook increasingly views the app as a standalone offering in its own right.
