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I’ll add a thought: The great irony in Facebook’s situation is that it is purely the result of hubris. In 2010, Zuckerberg saw FB as the next great platform. T

I’ll add a thought: The great irony in Facebook’s situation is that it is purely the result of hubris. In 2010, Zuckerberg saw FB as the next great platform. The API was released to much acclaim. But the API essentially gave away the keys to the kingdom! Facebook either 1) didn’t realize that they weren’t a platform and the social graph was the most valuable information they possessed, and were blinded by ignorance, or 2) didn’t want to be “just” an advertisement business, and was blinded by hubris. Maybe it was a bit of both, but given how engineering driven FB is, I’d guess there was a healthy dose of #2, and probably still is.

GauntletWizard 9y ago
In 2010, Facebook's revenue was significantly driven by something other than ads - Social Games. Zynga and the like were raking in billions based on people clicking virtual cows, and Facebook was getting a cut. Promoting these kinds of uses was their goal. It's easy to see modern Ad-Driven FB and forget that there were other eras of the company.
- oflannabhra 9y ago
  Yes, hindsight is 20/20. However, Google was smart enough to see the endgame: knowing people’s interests is some of the most valuable information available to advertisers, ever. What Facebook has, and what they essentially gave away for free, is far more valuable than whatever revenue they generated as a “platform.” The fact FB was generating revenue as a platform in 2010 has more to do with their strategy (which was lacking at the time) than with the value of the information they had. I’m suggesting they Zuckerberg’s hubris prevented him from seeing the value of what FB already was, and how to monetize that.