Life Mashups: Business + Love

Yesterday’s acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook (and the subsequent reporting about the 19 billion dollar deal) has underscored something I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Most people have 2 distinctly separated compartments in which they live out their lives: work and play, or maybe they call it business and family… — they have career goals and life goals. Very few people talk about enthusiasm or love, but such passions permeate every minute of every day.

People are very happy loving others irrationally, but when it’s a matter of business, work, jobs, etc. then they expect mathematically precise logical analysis (however: such expectations are usually relaxed at the executive level — anyone who asks a CEO “why?” can expect to be unemployed in short shrift).

As “tech companies” such as Facebook acquire companies with huge databases of highly irrational and often incoherent data, the question of “why?” — and also of “how?” (as in: “how to make sense of this mixed-up confusion?”) — poses itself.

Another question that could be asked, though, is: Why do we separate and compartmentalize our lives this way at all? Yet I would advise investors not to hold their breath waiting for an answer to that one.