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Comment by blazespin | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I dunno. I thought it was an interesting experiment. I think it still has its uses. Facebook is hardly a monopoly in the sense that google or microsoft was. I know tonnes of people who don't use facebook and the people who do use it, it's usually just to connect with friends.

Facebook / instagram / messenger, from what I can see, are just hard charging innovative platforms trying to create products people like. Their businesses could crater pretty easily and the only reason it doesn't is because they keep trying different things.

It's not like search and microsoft's OS dominance / network effects from their Office products.

You don't need to log onto facebook in order to work, you chose to because it's fun and you can connect with friends. Google / MSFT have far deeper hooks.

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I know tonnes of people who don't use facebook and the people who do use it, it's usually just to connect with friends.

Facebook has 1.86 billion monthly active users as of Q4 2016[1]. At that time approximately 3.4 billion people used the internet. So a little over 1/2 the internet-using population, and 1/4 of everyone on Earth, has a Facebook account that they access at least once a month. If you drill down a bit about 80% of American adults use Facebook regularly[2]. You may know tonnes of people who don't use Facebook, but I think that's actually quite unusual. Outside of our HN-reading, privacy-interested, technically-competent bubble the overwhelming majority of people use Facebook, and Facebook does have an effective monopoly.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/technology/facebook-earnings... [2] http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-20...

80% of the country using facebook 'regularly' is not a monopoly. And even if it were, what are they monopolizing, social media in general? Just because 80% of the country visits McDonald's regularly does not make them a monopoly.

That is a bad analogy. You can start a family diner tomorrow and compete with McDonalds. There is nothing preventing that 80% to eat at your place.

However, you cannot start a social network tomorrow and expect to make a reasonable income. People will not join your network, because their friends are not there. Facebook holds a significant part of the world population hostage, because they cannot 'dine' somewhere else. Contrast this with a situation where social networks are federated. You could opt to go to a competing network because their service is better, without losing contacts to your friends.

I would not know if that qualifies as a monopoly legally, but there is clearly a huge difference between McDonalds and Facebook.

While network effects exist and are worrying, this is a bit too strong - you can have two accounts concurrently, and many people do. Hence why FB had to buy Instagram and Whatsapp, and why Snapshat has more than a hundred million users.

"You can have two accounts concurrently"... on all the sites that Facebook owns.

They tried to buy Snapchat too.

Some interesting reading on how we might measure the unusual cost of Facebook's monopoly to society.

https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopo...

There's also a scary number of people in developing countries who will report that they use Facebook, but not 'the internet'. Developing countries are the market Facebook could dominate, in the same way Microsoft dominated computers for normal people.

This is the scariest thing. Facebook tried to basically monopolize the Internet in India and other developing countries with Internet.org. There's a bunch of info out there on the subject, but this wired article is a good introduction: https://www.wired.com/2015/05/backlash-facebooks-free-intern...

Under normal circumstances 80% would begin to get the Antitrust drums beating.

80% of people using something is not the same as 80% market share.

Lol, try everyone under the age of 20. Facebook's survival is hardly assured. Why do you think zuck is working so hard on VR or why he split off messenger - because he knows facebooks survival is limited. What's app and Instagram is more of a threat than FB.

You people obviously don't use FB< if you did you'd realize that there is huge fatigue on the platform

The reason FB has done well is because they did some smart, viral things, but they can't just iterate like google or msft. They will die very quickly if they do. It's a very tenuous business they have

Facebook's survival is hardly assured.

Of course, but it'd take a long series of significant mistakes by Facebook for them to actually die. While another social network could potentially eat their market Facebook aren't just going to sit idly by and let them. They have the resources to tackle pretty much any threat, so the only way for them to fail is by getting things wrong internally. No one is going to invent a new way of communicating that Facebook can't copy.

Why do you think zuck is working so hard on VR or why he split off messenger - because he knows facebooks survival is limited. What's app and Instagram is more of a threat than FB.

I suspect a lot of Facebook's 'side projects' are driven by what Zuck finds interesting rather than what he thinks is important to Facebook's future.

You people obviously don't use FB< if you did you'd realize that there is huge fatigue on the platform

I don't think it's possible to gauge 1.86 billion people's opinions of Facebook by the things you see when you log in to your own account.

I am not sure people want another social network. It's not like search or computer OS or even Netflix. My feeling is that FB, as is (social news feeds), has no real future. I think the future is messenger, WhatsApp, instagram, vr, etc.

The reason fb is popular is zucks sheer force of Will and not because it's particularly necessary.

>Lol, try everyone under the age of 20.

LOL, those people will grow up too, and a large percentage of them will join places like FB and even LinkedIn. It's not like what people use in their teens is what they use when they get older, start working, etc.

Besides "What's app and Instagram is more of a threat than FB" is missing the point, as both are owned by FB, the company.

> Facebook [is] just hard charging innovative platforms trying to create products people like

That's a pretty charitable interpretation of Instant Articles.

I think you might be surprised at Facebook's levels of control https://twitter.com/auchenberg/status/834894652775923712?s=0...

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