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so did myspace, so did AOL. it is just an re-implementation of existing ideas and products. Nothing it offers is new or anything we haven't had for decades.

so did myspace, so did AOL. it is just an re-implementation of existing ideas and products. Nothing it offers is new or anything we haven't had for decades. Sure, a lot of people use it NOW but that will change just like it did for myspace, AOL, and plenty of other platforms. And those marriages/partnerships/business/etc don't exist BECAUSE of facebook, they exist because people started them and now they USE facebook as a tool, if facebook died tomorrow and was replaced by a new web-based-communication-and-advertising tool all of those things would still exist and all the marriages/partnerships/businesses/etc would shift to that platform, they wouldn't cease to exist. It doesn't create any value in any sort of dynamic new way, it is just a re-implementation of the same tools people have been building since the start of the internet. Everybody survived the death of those other tools just fine, no "value" was lost.

asimuvPR 10y ago
I met my wife on ICQ in the year 1998. My marriage happened because ICQ allowed me to connect with her. I would not have met her otherwise. :)
mpbm 10y ago
I think the key part is "if facebook disappeared and was replaced by another tool." The important part is how many people are in the SAME tool. The value to the user of a network depends on how many other people are in that network. The same number of people, split up into different networks, wouldn't be a linear decrease in value, it would be an exponential decrease in value. Maybe the fact that reality is clearly contradicting your intuition about value is important? 1 Billion-ish people find Facebook valuable. You disagreeing with them just makes you wrong, or maybe lacking in empathy. I didn't understand the value in ridesharing. I still think it shouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. But that's me not understanding reality; it isn't reality being wrong.

asimuvPR 10y ago

I met my wife on ICQ in the year 1998. My marriage happened because ICQ allowed me to connect with her. I would not have met her otherwise. :)

mpbm 10y ago

I think the key part is "if facebook disappeared and was replaced by another tool." The important part is how many people are in the SAME tool. The value to the user of a network depends on how many other people are in that network. The same number of people, split up into different networks, wouldn't be a linear decrease in value, it would be an exponential decrease in value. Maybe the fact that reality is clearly contradicting your intuition about value is important? 1 Billion-ish people find Facebook valuable. You disagreeing with them just makes you wrong, or maybe lacking in empathy. I didn't understand the value in ridesharing. I still think it shouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. But that's me not understanding reality; it isn't reality being wrong.