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I used to be the guy who'd always ask how Facebook will make money and say it's overvalued. Today, given the hard revenue and profit numbers I no longer argue

by Maro 15y ago

I used to be the guy who'd always ask how Facebook will make money and say it's overvalued. Today, given the hard revenue and profit numbers I no longer argue that Facebook is a real business and deserves a largish valuation. I also became a regular Facebook user. But I still have a funny feeling about it. It doesn't provide a userful service to me. It's just a centralized hub for wasting time. I do it with my social network, but somehow it's not a real social network, in so far as I don't make new friends or even add value to existing friendships. Of course, you could argue that Facebook defines the term social network. If Facebook disappeared off the face of the Earth, I wouldn't really care. I think the reason why this is not a problem for Facebook is that I'm the product, not the customer.

jonnathanson 15y ago
"It's just a centralized hub for wasting time." Sure, but let's take a step back and think about that statement in broader historical context. For a great many users, the internet itself is nothing more than a way of wasting time (well, wasting time and shopping -- though the latter often falls under the auspices of the former). The only functional difference is that Facebook is a "centralized hub"[1] for such time wasting. If Facebook never happened, if social networking in general never happened, people would still be wasting time online. And companies would still be making money off of that activity. [1] I would argue that the "centralized hub" description is apt, but there's an important distinction in the way users traverse that hub. Facebook isn't a portal or a walled garden in the way that, say, AOL was -- and this point is often lost on pundits and casual observers. Instead, Facebook is increasingly becoming a hub around which the rest of the web orbits. It lives with the distributed content web -- something portals often had trouble doing -- but it's the center of gravity within that web. People find things on Facebook, sure, but people also scour the web and share things back on Facebook. It's sort of like a beehive or an ant colony, actually. This is the real genius of social networking. There's no need for Facebook to have to aggregate and curate content; its users do that heavy lifting for it. There's no need for Facebook to have to develop games and other diversions; its developers do that for it. All Facebook needs to do is not piss off its users, while also monetizing them. That's a delicate balance in the long run, but for the time being, Facebook is sitting pretty in a wide-open field without apparent challengers.

by Maro 15y ago

jonnathanson 15y ago

"It's just a centralized hub for wasting time." Sure, but let's take a step back and think about that statement in broader historical context. For a great many users, the internet itself is nothing more than a way of wasting time (well, wasting time and shopping -- though the latter often falls under the auspices of the former). The only functional difference is that Facebook is a "centralized hub"[1] for such time wasting. If Facebook never happened, if social networking in general never happened, people would still be wasting time online. And companies would still be making money off of that activity. [1] I would argue that the "centralized hub" description is apt, but there's an important distinction in the way users traverse that hub. Facebook isn't a portal or a walled garden in the way that, say, AOL was -- and this point is often lost on pundits and casual observers. Instead, Facebook is increasingly becoming a hub around which the rest of the web orbits. It lives with the distributed content web -- something portals often had trouble doing -- but it's the center of gravity within that web. People find things on Facebook, sure, but people also scour the web and share things back on Facebook. It's sort of like a beehive or an ant colony, actually. This is the real genius of social networking. There's no need for Facebook to have to aggregate and curate content; its users do that heavy lifting for it. There's no need for Facebook to have to develop games and other diversions; its developers do that for it. All Facebook needs to do is not piss off its users, while also monetizing them. That's a delicate balance in the long run, but for the time being, Facebook is sitting pretty in a wide-open field without apparent challengers.