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What Walmart, Facebook, and Credit Cards Have in Common
- michael_dorfman 16y agoSo, in other words, what Walmart, Facebook and Credit Cards have in common is that in each case, many of the end-users don't understand the business model? Put another way: to what extent is it a "hidden" cost to say that Facebook is ad-supported, or that credit cards charge late fees? I'm also not sure the criticism of Facebook is fair. What does this paragraph mean, really? The aggregation of user generated content is a well known maneuver for web businesses. Why fight to generate content when users can do a better job of entertaining themselves. While I believe this is a good idea in theory, the practice of taking the vast majority of that collective value is questionable at best Facebook is not pretending to generate content, any more than Gmail is. Facebook offers a channel for me to communicate with my friends. My friends and I supply the content, Facebook provides the pipes. I, for one, don't mind that it's ad-supported; if they had a "premium" ad-free version for a small fee, I suppose I'd consider it, depending on the fee, but I can't say it would be a big priority. I'm also not impressed by the argument about data portability: This is the equivalent of changing mobile service providers but not being able to call your friends. It's not, really. It's more like the early days of the telephone (or email), where you could only communicate with those friends of yours who were already on the network. Complaining about the lack of portability is more like complaining "I am giving up my mobile phone. Why can't my friends still call me?"