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Actually I think he is saying that they need their advertising revenues to grow in order to maintain perceived momentum in advertisers' minds, in order to have revenue at all. So it's more drastic than what you describe, assuming of course that the OP is right and that retention of FB advertisers is null (which I'd love to see data about).

> Except the author doesn't say "like a ponzi scheme" it's unsustainable -- they say it is a ponzi scheme

Not the author, but I've addressed that elsewhere. Anyone who has used Facebook knows that Facebook doesn't solicit money from it's users or return money to it's user. This is hence clearly an analogy, no more than if I said Facebook was crap, a black hole, a dinosaur, or anything else.

> facebook doesn't need each successive generation of advertisers to be bigger than the previous which is what causes ponzi schemes to implode.

I believe the article is saying that Facebook needs each successive generation of users to be bigger than the previous, which is indeed what causes ponzi schemes to implode.

I guess I can see too how using the 'Ponzi scheme' word is not warranted, as it makes it sound illegal.