MySpace Tom beat Facebook in the long run | Hacker News Reader

MySpace Tom beat Facebook in the long run

theoutline.com

33 pointsdanso19 comments

I'm not sure exactly what point this article is trying to make. Being rich and powerful is stressful? Yes, we all knew that.

Zuckerberg could retire at any point and do the exact same thing Tom is doing. It's clear he wants to continue to be the CEO of Facebook, that it's something he values more than traveling and taking pretty photos for instagram. Seems to me like being one of the most powerful people in the world is a more interesting prospect for him.

> Being rich and powerful is stressful? Yes, we all knew that.

Uh, that's not the point at all.

Maybe it's overly simplistic, but the point of the article is that Tom went from being on top to having his company become a punchline. But in retrospect, having $650 million dollars and not a care in the world is quite possibly a better place to be in than the guy who's worth tens of billions, but it is spearheading one of the most socially destructive organizations on the planet.

It's obviously arguable, but in my opinion, Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg's legacy so far, is a big fat net negative on the world.

At it's best Facebook offers me a paltry and superficial insight into the lives of people that I don't really care about enough to talk to on a regular basis.

At it's worst, Facebook feeds social insecurity and anxiety; builds and sells terrifyingly accurate personality profiles of people; deepens partisanship and tribal tendencies; and has become one of the premier conduits for falsehoods and propaganda.

I won't demonize Zuckerberg because I can't presume to understand his motives; and I will give him the benefit of the doubt that what he wants to do is make the world a better place. But so far, like giving a time machine to a chimpanzee, he's really making a fucking mess of things.

"big fat net negative"? Tell that to my stock portfolio. I'm up over 400% on FB stock.

I disagree. Facebook solves a real problem - finding real people on the internet. Especially at university when you are meeting lots of new people it was really useful and I remember before it existed wishing there was some website where I could look people up.

They've lost their way, sure. But I think they could fix things fairly easily - reduce the amount of advertising, provide a way to hide all "shared" posts and "someone tagged you", "remember this day 5 years ago" etc.

They won't do that but... you know.

Facebook isn't solving a real-world problem. Before Messenger, I could have easily just kept in touch with those I care about via text message. Without the ad targeting, echo chambers, and anxiety that social platforms create with "keeping up with the joneses".

There's a bunch of negative externalities. I don't want to be a user anymore. I will share things I care enough to share with my friends directly, not through an abstraction of a "wall" where an opaque algorithm decides who sees what. It's incredibly impersonal. It is by no means "connecting" us. Facebook sows far more division than connection.

This started out as a tweet that went viral yesterday (https://twitter.com/jeremypgordon/status/984123354415337473), an Outline editor asked if he wanted to turn it into a column, 24 hours later ...

So what's driving Zuck to stay in the game? Does he really believe in the work he's doing? Is he feeding his narcissism? Does he really want more money? Can he just not let go of his baby?

Remember a year ago, when Zuckerberg was doing his goodwill tour to set up a potential presidential run? What a difference a few months make.

This may be debatable and we'll never know how history will remember our time but if you're Zuck, like Jobs/Gates/Musk, you have a potential to be a memorable person in history. Like laymen know the names of a few famous scientists, explorers, artists and politicians from centuries ago (Ceasar, Columbus, Newton). Millions of people have come and gone in the centuries since but only a handful of names are commonly remembered. In a sense, he has a legacy to protect.

Can you name a commonly known businessman from Ceasar's or Columbus' times?

Seneca the Younger

Jakob Fugger the Younger, the most wildly successful link in the Fugger dynasty of bankers to the Habsburgs, and who was immortalised in the 1990s German video game Die Fugger!

The nature of business is so different today that direct comparisons are difficult but you might call Crassus a businessman

We remember people who are the face of things that change the world; inventors/discoverer/scientist/etc. (Edit: it sounds like you're ...) Implying he's a businessman so will not be remembered makes no sense. If Musk colonizes Mars, he will be remembered. Social media may be a footnote in history, or it may be looked back on like the industrial revolution except there is no single frontman for the industrial revolution. Zuck has inspired an Oscar winning movie and now Congressional hearings, so I'm pretty sure he's the face of social media and history will basically be written that he invented it; although we know that's not entirely accurate.

Can you name the person who invented the printing press? The person who invented the cotton gin?

Crassus was one of the three triumvirs with Pompey and Caesar, but was formerly better known as a a famously unscrupulous and fabulously wealthy business man.

Perhaps most notoriously, he invented a fire department that would only put out your house fire if you sold the property at the price he wanted. Negotiations went on as the house burned.

Not quite that early but Isambard Kingdom Brunel is pretty memorable.

Columbus himself was arguably a businessman.

Why does a legacy matter when you're dead? You won't be around to know if you truly are a legacy. Sure, Zuckerberg has a hospital but who knows what civilization will remember of him in 500 years.

To rationalize it my own mind, he must simply continue being CEO since that's what he enjoys doing.

I mean MySpace was eventually sold off to an AdTech firm (for its user data, yes, literally selling the actual user data, and it ran annoying autoplay audio ads on every single page), but if people want to remember MySpace as a reminder of a simpler time, more power to them.

"the long run" is relative and subjective

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