These network effect businesses are WILDLY PROFITABLE for a good long while if you keep overhead low, keep the product stable, and don't try to Take Over The In

These network effect businesses are WILDLY PROFITABLE for a good long while if you keep overhead low, keep the product stable, and don't try to Take Over The Internet by doing something novel, developer-intensive, and (usually) stupid. Unfortunately any platform that draws >10 million daily users will reliably have people calling and offering billions of dollars to adopt that strategy and chase after revenue growth. Eventually the owner breaks down and agrees to take a huge personal payoff in order for the company to adopt a "Double or nothing" policy. Over, and over again. There's too many enormous piles of money out there seeking a return for this to be a sensible self-regulating system with stable provision of goods & services. Holdouts are few and far between, like Craigslist.