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Yeah Facebook is able to leverage peer pressure in a big way, yahoo had email but with facebook messenger if you cancel out you lose access to communication with a lot of people. Not even google was able to make a dent in facebook, google plus turned into a broken joke.

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AOL/AIM used to be Huge. Now not so much.

It didn't help that when the buzz and hype was greatest for Google Plus they... didn't let people join Google Plus without a difficult-to-obtain invite. By the time they cut that out nobody gave a shit anymore.

Turns out Cartman's "you can't come" technique doesn't work so well IRL.

It worked for GMail though.

Yeah, it did get some buzz going iirc. Gmail doesn't rely on network effects tho.

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