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> Did Facebook simply get there first, or did they instead just do social networking better than everyone else? Isn't that kind of obvious? The article kind of
by rconti 7y ago
> Did Facebook simply get there first, or did they instead just do social networking better than everyone else?
Isn't that kind of obvious? The article kind of answers that itself:
> In the beginning, way back in 1996, it was SixDegrees. Last year, it was Friendster. Last week, it was Orkut. Next week, it could be Flickr.
Friendster, Orkut, Myspace, Google+ (ironically, I had to Google the latter, as I couldn't even remember its name). Many social networks have come and gone.
That's not to say Facebook hasn't likely done unsavory things to perpetuate its dominance. But it was better, in one or many ways, than all that came before it, and all that have tried to succeed it. Many haven't even tried. Twitter and Instagram don't even attempt to replicate your real-life connections. Hell, I can't even remember what pseudonym my real-life friends are using on these other networks. They're playing a different game.
This is a strength for those networks, in some ways. For those who care about what "influencers" say, or in what opinions are shouted the loudest by the folks followed by the most loud-shouters. If you care about both a footballer's opinion on a match as well as what he ate for breakfast; what a Kardashian wore as well as what she was paid to say.
In many ways, the various social networks aren't attempting to compete, they're attempting to 'win' their own niche.
- tjoff 7y agoIt is very hard to gain traction now when Facebook already has a near monopoly for most but niches. That wasn't the case back when Facebook started. I'd actually think you can say that Facebook simply got there first, and with first I mean to first capture the large swath of people that wasn't techies nor young people. They had great timing with when the mainstream started to get pretty comfortable and curious about the Internet (which was a pretty huge deal considering how big the barrier to computers and the Internet was for many/most people).
- jarjoura 7y agoFacebook was absolutely not first. MySpace had a HUGE lead. Facebook came in with a superior product and won on its own merit. If you want to claim first person advantage, you should definitely point to Friendster though in the US or Orkut in South America. However, for all the dozens of social networks trying to unseat the behemoth MySpace, they all collapsed under their own weight. Turns out building a scalable network of social connections is a very hard problem to solve.
- rconti 7y agoI think parent's point still stands. They're saying it's hard to compete now I don't think it was intentional on Facebook's part, but in retrospect it would have been a brilliant strategy. MySpace was largely populated by a high school/shortly-post-high-school crowd. Facebook came along and your college had to be added/invited (since residence halls and class schedules were curated). Nothing drives demand like exclusivity. Now all of MySpace's former demographic was clamoring to get in -- either by graduating HS and moving to college, or by having their existing college added. And then the floodgates opened.
- jarjoura 7y agoCollege-only Facebook would have died after everyone graduated and it really took off after they decided to compete with Twitter's feed. The model of having a stream of news of people complaining about what they had for breakfast allowed grandparents to get massive FOMO and join to see what their grand kids were up to. Zuckerberg for all his flaws has always had an eye for what the next big social media wave is and went after it.
- rconti 7y agoAgreed, but I think a(n unintended) side effect of college-only was to drive the demand. Things we utterly hated, like turning a pull-only format of "let me view my friend's profile" (which later became "what's changed is in yellow") into the push style "newsfeed", and requiring real names, really made it what it is today. Obviously there are still fake accounts, and people aren't all using their real names anymore, but it's so much closer to a "real" profile than anything else out there. But yeah, especially the newsfeed. Making users poll friends' profiles never would have resulted in the engagement they require. Frankly, the platform would have died because user interest/engagement would have gone elsewhere.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- enobrev 7y agoI used to agree that Facebook was superior, but I don't anymore. Myspace allowed people to far better express themselves with design and music. It was a shit show, but so are we.
- soneca 7y agoOrkut in Brazil once had a large as monopoly as Facebook now has.
- rconti 7y ago[citation needed]. And I was on Orkut and got tons of friend requests from Brazilians. Internet penetration in Brazil at the time of Orkut's dominance alone makes this almost certainly false without some interesting qualifications.
- soneca 7y agoI just googled a little bit (won't share the links because they are easy to find and check, and I am on mobile, at work). Orkut had ~29 million users by the time it was passed by Facebook in number of users in Brazil. This was about ~65% of internet users in Brazil. Today Facebook has ~75 million users in Brazil, which is about 53% of internet users in Brazil today. Of course, it all depends on how you define "monopoly" here. But with the definitions: "% of users that use any social network" or "% of users that use the internet" , Orkut had as much a monopoly as Facebook today. If the definition is "% of users from the whole population" that probably Facebook has more today.
- adfm 7y agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
- enobrev 7y agoHe was clearly right
- landryraccoon 7y agoI mean, he wasn’t wrong. He pretty definitely proved that we are collectively a bunch of dumb fucks.
- adfm 7y agoHe was wrong in offering the info in the first place. However, I don't disagree with your second statement.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoYeah and your dumbass comment is a prime example why this industry will get regulated harder than whorehouses.
- drdeadringer 7y agoBack in the mid-90s to the turn of the century I was fond of and used Bolt.com, which might be described as "Facebook 10 years ahead of its time". Users had a profile page with their own username, picture(s), and related information, as well as access to mid-90s era style forums to live-chat with other users. It died around or just after 2000.
- deltron3030 7y ago>That's not to say Facebook hasn't likely done unsavory things to perpetuate its dominance. But it was better, in one or many ways, than all that came before it, and all that have tried to succeed it. They understood that multi sided markets can be "self promotional", people (or advertisers) get something out of it, therefore the actual users, advertisers and those who run communities drag more and more people in to get even more out of it.