> Will FB be able to infinitely increase their engagement, or will they run out, and be left with a bunch of zombie addicts who are no longer valuable to them,

> Will FB be able to infinitely increase their engagement, or will they run out, and be left with a bunch of zombie addicts who are no longer valuable to them, since they've effectively killed their host? It seems like drugs sometimes have this end game. Perhaps more saliently, microtransaction mobile games already have this pattern. They grow aggressively, stabilize after consuming all easily reached users, then slowly peter out. Rather than unbounded growth, we actually see something a lot like bacterial growth in a closed culture: lag, log, plateau, death. [1] It's (part of) what killed Zynga: their long-term engagement predictions didn't pan out and they couldn't cycle users to new apps fast enough. Subsequent companies like Supercell have learned to EOL apps like Clash of Clans - they draw down their advertising and onboarding efforts in favor of monetizing their existing players, and eventually wind down in favor of the next big thing. I'm not sure whether Facebook will end up like this - they have a real advantage because their users generate new content without requiring corporate effort. But I and several of my friends have abandoned FB less out of any moral principle than out of sheer disinterest in their increasingly unfriendly, cash-focused product. My suspicion is that they'll emphasize daily time per user and monetization, but slowly bleed daily users in return. [1] http://academic.pgcc.edu/~kroberts/Lecture/Chapter%206/growth.html http://academic.pgcc.edu/~kroberts/Lecture/Chapter%206/growt...