5 ms·

How My Dependence on Facebook cost me my startup, $100M, and 110 jobs

44 points by keewee7 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DaveExeter 5y ago
When I hear "feel good entertainment company" I think "junk content".
- cyanydeez 5y ago
  and dependent on facebook i hear scam, prropaganda or outright terrorism
metadat 5y ago
The comment is now deleted, but here it is with my reply: > smoldesu 3 minutes ago > "and always remember if they can give it, they can also take it..." Sounds like the moral of the story here. I have a hard time not coming at this from a devils advocate approach, especially since the guy seems very business-oriented and should have realized that something needed to change. It's hard to sympathize with someone that built a business off of abusing someone elses content feed, and then pointing their finger at Facebook when the paradigm shifts away from that content. I don't think Facebook is necessarily right in this case, but the writing was on the wall, and if they didn't chase the current trends then they wouldn't be able to enjoy the same level of success they had harnessed before Sure, agree on all points ... yet remember it's all triggered because Zuckerfu wants people to stop "feeling good" and instead "take him and $FB seriously". Kind of disgusting.
- pempem 5y ago
  I'm not sure this is disgusting. We can find it to be hilarious or something to ridicule but: 1. its never quite that simple. "he wanted to be taken more seriously" also might mean "pending agreements with news companies" "potential growth in news facebook page audiences", "finding more funding" or any other series of items 2. this founder spend 4mn/mo on ads and apparently nothing on business intelligence. With that kind of spend, its worth it to dedicate say 20% of your ad spend on understanding what is important to facebook and trying to remain in the know. It'll never be perfect but huge changes will be perceptible either in detail or in the fact that a huge change is company 3. they spent 4mn/mo on ads and nothing on even starting a diversification strategy. i have a hard time believing that there wasn't a single engineer or PM or something thinking along these lines
- yunohn 5y ago
  I mean, are you arguing Facebook has an obligation to somehow support every single business model that is using their services? Why would this company’s content deserve more newsfeed exposure than other genres?
  - metadat 5y ago
    It's a classic bait-and-switch, you're an FB partner today but tomorrow you may be demonitized without notice. Extremely one way relationship, all hanging on the whims of your buddy mark fuckerberg's ego.
donkarma 5y ago
Snapchat was around in 2018 for sure
- umeshunni 5y ago
  I think they meant that the demographic that uses Snapchat wasn't too young for the kind of content they were pushing.
nonameiguess 5y ago
And yet he is depending on Twitter to tell his story, apparently learning nothing.
bryan_w 5y ago
> FB wants, hard hitting news, and opinion pieces Yeah...in 2018 after being dragged through the Cambridge Analytica mud for over a year at that point, I'm gonna guess that it wasn't FB that actually was responsible for the shift that just so happened to impact independent media companies. The NYT sends their regards...
anamax 5y ago
Facebook also gave him his startup.
Havoc 5y ago
The algo is everywhere. The exact same fears exist with the little youtube creators. And same for SEO website crowd. I'd imagine tiktok creators feel the same. The only silver lining is that knowledge of it is now fairly pervasive so people put more emphasis on diversification
nradov 5y ago
As a Facebook user I'm glad to see them destroying junk startups like LittleThings. It's one less source of "viral" content to filter out of my feed.
weq 5y ago
Social media companies and crypto bros are pretty much the same thing at this point.

44 points by keewee7 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

DaveExeter 5y ago

When I hear "feel good entertainment company" I think "junk content".

cyanydeez 5y ago
and dependent on facebook i hear scam, prropaganda or outright terrorism

metadat 5y ago

The comment is now deleted, but here it is with my reply: > smoldesu 3 minutes ago > "and always remember if they can give it, they can also take it..." Sounds like the moral of the story here. I have a hard time not coming at this from a devils advocate approach, especially since the guy seems very business-oriented and should have realized that something needed to change. It's hard to sympathize with someone that built a business off of abusing someone elses content feed, and then pointing their finger at Facebook when the paradigm shifts away from that content. I don't think Facebook is necessarily right in this case, but the writing was on the wall, and if they didn't chase the current trends then they wouldn't be able to enjoy the same level of success they had harnessed before Sure, agree on all points ... yet remember it's all triggered because Zuckerfu wants people to stop "feeling good" and instead "take him and $FB seriously". Kind of disgusting.

pempem 5y ago
I'm not sure this is disgusting. We can find it to be hilarious or something to ridicule but: 1. its never quite that simple. "he wanted to be taken more seriously" also might mean "pending agreements with news companies" "potential growth in news facebook page audiences", "finding more funding" or any other series of items 2. this founder spend 4mn/mo on ads and apparently nothing on business intelligence. With that kind of spend, its worth it to dedicate say 20% of your ad spend on understanding what is important to facebook and trying to remain in the know. It'll never be perfect but huge changes will be perceptible either in detail or in the fact that a huge change is company 3. they spent 4mn/mo on ads and nothing on even starting a diversification strategy. i have a hard time believing that there wasn't a single engineer or PM or something thinking along these lines
yunohn 5y ago
I mean, are you arguing Facebook has an obligation to somehow support every single business model that is using their services? Why would this company’s content deserve more newsfeed exposure than other genres?
- metadat 5y ago
  It's a classic bait-and-switch, you're an FB partner today but tomorrow you may be demonitized without notice. Extremely one way relationship, all hanging on the whims of your buddy mark fuckerberg's ego.

donkarma 5y ago

Snapchat was around in 2018 for sure

umeshunni 5y ago
I think they meant that the demographic that uses Snapchat wasn't too young for the kind of content they were pushing.

nonameiguess 5y ago

And yet he is depending on Twitter to tell his story, apparently learning nothing.

bryan_w 5y ago

> FB wants, hard hitting news, and opinion pieces Yeah...in 2018 after being dragged through the Cambridge Analytica mud for over a year at that point, I'm gonna guess that it wasn't FB that actually was responsible for the shift that just so happened to impact independent media companies. The NYT sends their regards...

anamax 5y ago

Facebook also gave him his startup.

Havoc 5y ago

The algo is everywhere. The exact same fears exist with the little youtube creators. And same for SEO website crowd. I'd imagine tiktok creators feel the same. The only silver lining is that knowledge of it is now fairly pervasive so people put more emphasis on diversification

nradov 5y ago

As a Facebook user I'm glad to see them destroying junk startups like LittleThings. It's one less source of "viral" content to filter out of my feed.

weq 5y ago

Social media companies and crypto bros are pretty much the same thing at this point.