3 ms·

I think they are 100% wrong about Facebook being an also ran. The author is coming from the perspective of a large corporation type and fails to see that not s

I think they are 100% wrong about Facebook being an also ran. The author is coming from the perspective of a large corporation type and fails to see that not selling out and not compromising your ideals will win in the long term. The author would have put Craigslist's founder up on that list and a few years ago Larry Page and Sergey Brin for not selling out when they had the chance.

nostrademons 18y ago
Their argument is really that MySpace has already won. There may be some truth to that - MySpace is about 4 times bigger by the numbers, and in most other industries, 80% market share = winner. It's hard for us to see that because we're from the demographic that tends to use FaceBook, but remember that 2/3 of Americans don't even go to college, let alone use a social networking site centered around the college experience. I can kinda see FaceBook vs. MySpace as being today's Apple vs. Microsoft (or IBM) battle. FaceBook's cultivated a sort of elite brand - "we're better than Myspacers simply because we're on FaceBook". But remember that Microsoft eventually won: the masses, by definition, are far more numerous than the elite.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  I can kinda see FaceBook vs. MySpace as being today's Apple vs. Microsoft (or IBM) battle... Microsoft eventually won: the masses, by definition, are far more numerous than the elite. To say that Microsoft "won" is to be mired in zero-sum, winner-take-all thinking. If you can look at Apple Computer's earnings reports and see a company that has "lost", you're smoking something. Microsoft is profitable, Apple is profitable. And the masses may outnumber the elite, but the elite has a lot more disposable income per capita. There's no reason why both MySpace and FaceBook cannot "win" simultaneously.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  I'm curious where you get the "MySpace is about 4 times bigger" number? My understanding was that Facebook had grown to be larger than MySpace in some foreign markets, and that it was about half the size in the US. It is still firmly in second place--MySpace usage is still growing roughly on pace with Facebook so Zeno gets his revenge--but certainly more than 25% as popular as MySpace. I'm not saying Facebook is worth 15 billion (that'd be stupid...I'm talking Stave Ballmer level stupid), but one can't say they've lost to MySpace, when the market is still wide open worldwide, and Facebook seems to know how to execute internationally than MySpace. But, I think Facebook will lose, in the end, to a few dozen companies that build a better garden without the walls. Each will be smaller than Facebook, but they'll end the reign of Facebook and MySpace with a wholly different process of social networking. (I think a single destination "social portal" is as doomed to failure as the whole web 1.0 "portal" idea turned out to be...portals will always be less interesting than the whole Internet, so when the whole Internet is socially enabled the social portals will falter. The oracle has spoken.)
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    It was based on a userbase of 80 million for MySpace (from the article) and 20 million for FaceBook (which I'd heard as of about spring '07). However, apparently FaceBook has now grown past at least 30 million (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/07/10/facebook-rockets-past-30-million-users/ http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/07/10/facebook-rockets-pa...), and may be more now. So it's probably more like a factor of 2 or 3 now. My information was out of date, sorry. Edit: actually, the MySpace numbers are out of date too, so if they've grown at the same rate, MySpace should still be 4x bigger. And I agree that the future of social networking is probably something that hasn't been invented yet. The market is maybe 5 years old, which is about the same age as search when Google started kicking ass. My startup is actually in the running, so I've got a vested interest in FaceBook failing, but we've got so far to go that I don't even dare to hope...
gnaritas 18y ago
I think he's 100% correct, Zuckerberg should have taken the money and ran while Facebook was hot, because in the end, it's a fad, and worth no where near what it's hyped to be. Craigslist and Google aren't fads, they're massively useful sites for everyone, unlike Facebook. Facebook was never in the league of a Google, EVER.
paul 18y ago
Yes, they were obviously way off with that one. Facebook has grown enormously in the past two years, and they would have no trouble selling for many times more than the $750M that he turned down. The great thing about these old articles is that with the benefit of history we can see wrong they are, which should tell us something about the current "news".
run4yourlives 18y ago
Facebook is going to become the poster child of dot-bomb 2.0. It may take a few years, and it'll be because of a super slowdown in the market outside of SV, but mark my words, it will happen.

nostrademons 18y ago

Their argument is really that MySpace has already won. There may be some truth to that - MySpace is about 4 times bigger by the numbers, and in most other industries, 80% market share = winner. It's hard for us to see that because we're from the demographic that tends to use FaceBook, but remember that 2/3 of Americans don't even go to college, let alone use a social networking site centered around the college experience. I can kinda see FaceBook vs. MySpace as being today's Apple vs. Microsoft (or IBM) battle. FaceBook's cultivated a sort of elite brand - "we're better than Myspacers simply because we're on FaceBook". But remember that Microsoft eventually won: the masses, by definition, are far more numerous than the elite.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
I can kinda see FaceBook vs. MySpace as being today's Apple vs. Microsoft (or IBM) battle... Microsoft eventually won: the masses, by definition, are far more numerous than the elite. To say that Microsoft "won" is to be mired in zero-sum, winner-take-all thinking. If you can look at Apple Computer's earnings reports and see a company that has "lost", you're smoking something. Microsoft is profitable, Apple is profitable. And the masses may outnumber the elite, but the elite has a lot more disposable income per capita. There's no reason why both MySpace and FaceBook cannot "win" simultaneously.
SwellJoe 18y ago
I'm curious where you get the "MySpace is about 4 times bigger" number? My understanding was that Facebook had grown to be larger than MySpace in some foreign markets, and that it was about half the size in the US. It is still firmly in second place--MySpace usage is still growing roughly on pace with Facebook so Zeno gets his revenge--but certainly more than 25% as popular as MySpace. I'm not saying Facebook is worth 15 billion (that'd be stupid...I'm talking Stave Ballmer level stupid), but one can't say they've lost to MySpace, when the market is still wide open worldwide, and Facebook seems to know how to execute internationally than MySpace. But, I think Facebook will lose, in the end, to a few dozen companies that build a better garden without the walls. Each will be smaller than Facebook, but they'll end the reign of Facebook and MySpace with a wholly different process of social networking. (I think a single destination "social portal" is as doomed to failure as the whole web 1.0 "portal" idea turned out to be...portals will always be less interesting than the whole Internet, so when the whole Internet is socially enabled the social portals will falter. The oracle has spoken.)
- nostrademons 18y ago
  It was based on a userbase of 80 million for MySpace (from the article) and 20 million for FaceBook (which I'd heard as of about spring '07). However, apparently FaceBook has now grown past at least 30 million (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/07/10/facebook-rockets-past-30-million-users/ http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/07/10/facebook-rockets-pa...), and may be more now. So it's probably more like a factor of 2 or 3 now. My information was out of date, sorry. Edit: actually, the MySpace numbers are out of date too, so if they've grown at the same rate, MySpace should still be 4x bigger. And I agree that the future of social networking is probably something that hasn't been invented yet. The market is maybe 5 years old, which is about the same age as search when Google started kicking ass. My startup is actually in the running, so I've got a vested interest in FaceBook failing, but we've got so far to go that I don't even dare to hope...

gnaritas 18y ago

I think he's 100% correct, Zuckerberg should have taken the money and ran while Facebook was hot, because in the end, it's a fad, and worth no where near what it's hyped to be. Craigslist and Google aren't fads, they're massively useful sites for everyone, unlike Facebook. Facebook was never in the league of a Google, EVER.

paul 18y ago

Yes, they were obviously way off with that one. Facebook has grown enormously in the past two years, and they would have no trouble selling for many times more than the $750M that he turned down. The great thing about these old articles is that with the benefit of history we can see wrong they are, which should tell us something about the current "news".

run4yourlives 18y ago

Facebook is going to become the poster child of dot-bomb 2.0. It may take a few years, and it'll be because of a super slowdown in the market outside of SV, but mark my words, it will happen.