The short answer is “Yes.”

Smart companies know that they have to constantly evolve. Keeping track of what their customers are doing and watching trends are ways to get ahead of their decision-making.

Alex Stamos, former Chief Security Officer (CSO) of Facebook, spoke at a conference and stated that:

“Mark Zuckerberg is sitting on more data about what people want to do online than anyone else in the world,” said Stamos, who was speaking at the Washington Post’s technology and policy conference on Wednesday evening.

He cited the acquisitions of private messaging WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion, and photo-sharing service Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, as examples of bets “that people think are insane but turn out to be prophetic because he knows the direction the world is going,” Stamos said.