I mean, this was absolutely a risk to them. They could have easily lost during the transition.
They did and then spent $5B purchasing Instagram and Whatsapp to recover.
I thought they spent $17B on Whatsapp.
19 billion buying WhatsApp.
Instagram was moments before ipo.
Also the FB html5 play at the time was a decent bridge to the app play which did of course explode growth.
So let’s be fair they didn’t fail but they acquired to grow even more.