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Facebook did not "set up the game". Everybody is playing the same game. Facebook did not have special powers to change the rules. They built an especially attr

• JohnBooty 6y ago
  Facebook did not have special powers to change the rules. They built an especially attractive service (judging by user numbers) That is why they initially rose to dominance. They provided a faster and more focused version of what Myspace had become. More attractive, indeed. They maintain dominance primarily through the power of network effect. You are free to switch away from Facebook, but doing so is useless unless a significant portion of your network switches as well. FB's end user experience is still good (I'm talking strictly about their engineering and UX here, not their business practices and other board-level decisions) and they have expanded it by adding things like their marketplace. If that experience ever got bad enough I'm sure people would start itching to switch. But as things are, a competitor would not merely need to be as good or even 50% or 100% better. More like 500% or 1000% better if they wanted to overcome the momentum of FB's network effect.