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How is that analysis different than myspace 15 years ago (or whenever)? social media platforms are extremely durable until the next hot new thing comes along.

How is that analysis different than myspace 15 years ago (or whenever)? social media platforms are extremely durable until the next hot new thing comes along. There is a new generation you need to engage every ~5 years or so, and they see facebook as the platform to talk with grandma. FB made some genius acquisitions with instagram and whatsapp, but eventually they are going to fail to acquire the challenger, and when that happens the fall can be swift.

enitihas 6y ago
Myspace never had this much cash in the bank. And Facebook has shown they are willing to copy anything that works (Stories)
moron4hire 6y ago
To say that Facebook replaced MySpace (and therefore, it could also happen to Facebook) is not exactly accurate. Or rather, not the full picture. https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media Facebook surpassed MySpace in monthly user count by April 2008. MySpace hit its peak in December 2008. This wasn't a "migration" from MySpace to Facebook. It was Facebook out growing MySpace. But that doesn't necessarily mean it could happen again. "The percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019." Facebook grew at a time when social media usage was also growing. We don't have a huge, untapped pool of users from which to fuel a "Facebook killer". There was also a significant difference in how the sites we originally used, so there was interest from a lot of early users in using both. My feeling is that any site that might eventually supplant Facebook as the dominant social media force would need to grow in an underserved market before expanding into the general market, and do it in such a way that Facebook doesn't notice and come crush them first. What strikes me is that the peak year for MySpace and the year Facebook surpassed it was also the year that smartphones started to take off. Facebook, being the far "simpler" site, would have been much more usable in early smartphone browsers. And smartphones were a huge part of the growth of social media. So it suggests that not only does a Facebook competitor need an untapped market to serve, it needs a platform on which it can create a significantly better experience than what Facebook can do. Unfortunately, Facebook is ahead of the game on this issue. Why do you think they spend so much money on Oculus and VR? There are leaked memos from Zuckerberg that explicitly spell out this strategy. They are taking over the platform early to avoid ceding the space to a future competitor.
- oblio 6y ago
  Agreed. IBM never really lost the mainframe market. And Microsoft never really lost the desktop market. Sometimes the incumbents stay there until their domain disappears.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
Google is not a social media platform, and they aren't even trying to be one anymore now that G+ has been scrapped. Sure, they could be displaced by a better search engine, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
- megous 6y ago
  My guess is that this is super unlikely in the age where Google pays billions to be a default, or where people don't even know what URL is, and browsers are set up to automatically search anything you (mis)type into the address bar. Most people probably don't even have a conception of what search engine is, and that it's not just a part of the browser or their phone, but it's an independent service.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > Sure, they could be displaced by a better search engine, but that's a whole different kettle of fish. I don't see how that's remotely possible. The capital costs are just too high. Currently there is only one other formidable English language search engine (Bing - all the other search sites like DuckDuckGo use Bing), and it's been a distant also-ran for over a decade now. If anyone has any plausible scenario where Google looses their search supremacy, would love to hear it.
  - richk449 6y ago
    It is hard to imagine how google loses raw search superiority, but the more likely scenario is that they lose their dominance somehow: (1) social networks provide better basis on which to give answers/results to users, so FB “replaces” google. (2) advances in deep learning make googles secret sauce not so critical, and lots of competitors provide good enough search results (and VC funding makes the build out of the massive data enters possible (I.e. the u er/Lyft scenario) Side question: is google’s dominance really built on search these days? If they shut down the search engine, would it have a significant effect on their bottom line?
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
MarkMc 6y ago
> social media platforms are extremely durable until the next hot new thing comes along. This is exactly why I sold my Facebook shares a few months ago. The next Instagram might not sell to Facebook so cheaply, or the sale might well be blocked by regulators. Having said that, I still have a large position in Twitter because the brand seems a lot more durable.
BbzzbB 6y ago
MySpace peaked at 75M monthly users, which is a rounding error to FB's 3B monthly users. That fact alone is major, the network effects for both FB and GOOG makes them very hard to replace in and off itself. For instance, a competitor would have to capture practically all of the connected world population to takeover Messenger. Their sheer size and importance makes them unavoidable for most other-party web platforms cementing their position. Pile on to that the fact they both have 12 digits war chests capable of buying any upcoming competitor (for instance Instagram) or trying to crush them, this comparison to MySpace which comes up every time with this discussion is fallacious. There are reasons why the web is "Winner takes all/most" and is now centered around a handful of companies with sectorial monopolies, I have a hard time to see how a component of FAAAM could fail naturally any time soon.

enitihas 6y ago

Myspace never had this much cash in the bank. And Facebook has shown they are willing to copy anything that works (Stories)

moron4hire 6y ago

To say that Facebook replaced MySpace (and therefore, it could also happen to Facebook) is not exactly accurate. Or rather, not the full picture. https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media Facebook surpassed MySpace in monthly user count by April 2008. MySpace hit its peak in December 2008. This wasn't a "migration" from MySpace to Facebook. It was Facebook out growing MySpace. But that doesn't necessarily mean it could happen again. "The percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019." Facebook grew at a time when social media usage was also growing. We don't have a huge, untapped pool of users from which to fuel a "Facebook killer". There was also a significant difference in how the sites we originally used, so there was interest from a lot of early users in using both. My feeling is that any site that might eventually supplant Facebook as the dominant social media force would need to grow in an underserved market before expanding into the general market, and do it in such a way that Facebook doesn't notice and come crush them first. What strikes me is that the peak year for MySpace and the year Facebook surpassed it was also the year that smartphones started to take off. Facebook, being the far "simpler" site, would have been much more usable in early smartphone browsers. And smartphones were a huge part of the growth of social media. So it suggests that not only does a Facebook competitor need an untapped market to serve, it needs a platform on which it can create a significantly better experience than what Facebook can do. Unfortunately, Facebook is ahead of the game on this issue. Why do you think they spend so much money on Oculus and VR? There are leaked memos from Zuckerberg that explicitly spell out this strategy. They are taking over the platform early to avoid ceding the space to a future competitor.

oblio 6y ago
Agreed. IBM never really lost the mainframe market. And Microsoft never really lost the desktop market. Sometimes the incumbents stay there until their domain disappears.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago

Google is not a social media platform, and they aren't even trying to be one anymore now that G+ has been scrapped. Sure, they could be displaced by a better search engine, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

megous 6y ago
My guess is that this is super unlikely in the age where Google pays billions to be a default, or where people don't even know what URL is, and browsers are set up to automatically search anything you (mis)type into the address bar. Most people probably don't even have a conception of what search engine is, and that it's not just a part of the browser or their phone, but it's an independent service.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> Sure, they could be displaced by a better search engine, but that's a whole different kettle of fish. I don't see how that's remotely possible. The capital costs are just too high. Currently there is only one other formidable English language search engine (Bing - all the other search sites like DuckDuckGo use Bing), and it's been a distant also-ran for over a decade now. If anyone has any plausible scenario where Google looses their search supremacy, would love to hear it.
- richk449 6y ago
  It is hard to imagine how google loses raw search superiority, but the more likely scenario is that they lose their dominance somehow: (1) social networks provide better basis on which to give answers/results to users, so FB “replaces” google. (2) advances in deep learning make googles secret sauce not so critical, and lots of competitors provide good enough search results (and VC funding makes the build out of the massive data enters possible (I.e. the u er/Lyft scenario) Side question: is google’s dominance really built on search these days? If they shut down the search engine, would it have a significant effect on their bottom line?
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

MarkMc 6y ago

> social media platforms are extremely durable until the next hot new thing comes along. This is exactly why I sold my Facebook shares a few months ago. The next Instagram might not sell to Facebook so cheaply, or the sale might well be blocked by regulators. Having said that, I still have a large position in Twitter because the brand seems a lot more durable.

BbzzbB 6y ago

MySpace peaked at 75M monthly users, which is a rounding error to FB's 3B monthly users. That fact alone is major, the network effects for both FB and GOOG makes them very hard to replace in and off itself. For instance, a competitor would have to capture practically all of the connected world population to takeover Messenger. Their sheer size and importance makes them unavoidable for most other-party web platforms cementing their position. Pile on to that the fact they both have 12 digits war chests capable of buying any upcoming competitor (for instance Instagram) or trying to crush them, this comparison to MySpace which comes up every time with this discussion is fallacious. There are reasons why the web is "Winner takes all/most" and is now centered around a handful of companies with sectorial monopolies, I have a hard time to see how a component of FAAAM could fail naturally any time soon.