4 ms·
Isn't it that FB type of businesses are a bit like pro-athlete like, in terms of viable career lifetime? I remember digg, friendster, myspace, tumblr, bebo, msn
by mrtksn 5y ago
Isn't it that FB type of businesses are a bit like pro-athlete like, in terms of viable career lifetime? I remember digg, friendster, myspace, tumblr, bebo, msn messenger, Foursquare etc...
Some gone, some still alive but all of them had what's FB's primary moat: network effect.
It's a strong moat but once things start to move to the wrong direction things can move fast... unlike with Walmart.
- ethbr0 5y agoThey can, but I'd argue that none of those had the pervasiveness of Facebook. Moreso due to timing & mobile adoption, than any actual failing. Facebook's moat is that it's the Yellow Pages of social. It took the web to kill Yellow Pages, not a better phone book. Which is probably why you see FB investing in acquiring social-but-different competitors and researching paradigm shifts.
- pkdpic 5y agoI like that analogy but I'm realizing I have no real understanding of if people saw the yellow pages as a problematic monopoly in any way. I'm sure no where near where facebook is with negative perception but it seems like small businesses at least could have viewed the yellow pages as problematic.
- gnatman 5y agoThey saw it as problematic enough that AT&T was broken up in the 80s.
- jdrc 5y agoyellow pages did not have network effect.
- paulpauper 5y agobut that was a long time ago, before any social network had the opportunity to establish the sort of dominance Facebook + Instagram + WhatsApp have
- jjfoooo5 5y agoInstagram and WhatsApp were competitors in the making that FB bought out. They can't do that trick anymore.
- paulpauper 5y agowhy not. Facebook can afford it
- oblio 5y agoFacebook makes more profit in 1 quarter than all of those combined had revenue over their entire lifetimes. Stalin used to say that quantity has a quality all its own. The world has changed. Even if Facebook decays, it could decay over literal decades, still being profitable. Yahoo is still around ($1.3bn in revenue), IBM is still around, SUSE is still around. We only talk about the cool tip of the iceberg but IT/tech/software is huge.
- dntrkv 5y agoNone of those every turned into real businesses, whereas Facebook is one of the biggest money printers in the world. Also, Facebook has been around for about 18 years now. Myspace was a major player for like 4 years.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoFacebook grew in an environment where people were starting to get used to be spied and measured permanently, and it dialed it to eleven and greedily went for your parent's neighbor's cousin's kid's data too. All for ads.