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Comment by whoisjuan | Hacker News Reader

I said this before here in HN and I'd said it again. Facebook is a freaking money making machine and will be that for many years to come.

Feel whatever you want about Zuckerberg, the company, their products and anything else, but what they created is simply the best digital distribution channel besides Google. Many business are built and scaled on Facebook Ads.

Putting opinions about privacy and politics aside (which are definitely topics that should be discussed), Facebook was the last Silicon Valley company to create something that literally has disrupted the way we live and interact. All the other ones that supposedly were on that road are barely alive (e.g: Uber).

In contrast many of the current public tech companies with promising trajectories of global disruption (for example Shopify) were created outside of Silicon Valley.

This is my personal opinion, but I think the golden Silicon Valley days are way in the past.

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Personal opinions aside, it's amazing how little credit Zuckerberg gets as an executive. At least compared to Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Musk, even Larry&Sergei.

I think it's pretty hard to identify even a single major strategic decision that Zuckerberg didn't get right given enough hindsight.

I recently read Steven Levy's _Facebook_, which I thought was a well-balanced history of the company.

Some mistakes he highlights that resonated with me: Facebook Platform, Beacon, Cambridge Analytica, foreign expansion without native language support, release of private Messenger records to 3rd parties, placing Security within the business rather than engineering organization and failing to respond to state-actor threats

I'd suspect this is because we evaluate CEOs not just as ruthless money maximizers but as people who use their outsized leverage and influence to create a positive impact on the world. It's hard to argue that Facebook has given us anything of the degree of benefit that, say, Google has, or Tesla could.

Personality and public image play a big part too. Zuckerberg has the charisma of a head of lettuce on his best days.

True, but dont underestimate how little effort he's made to anything but growing revenue.

Asking out of curiosity, not sarcastically: how has Google made a positive impact on the world?

Have you ever had to research something in a library like in books?

Improving the world's access to information is probably the biggest one? I would guess Google Search is, if you could magically add up all the net positives/negatives, one of the best things to happen to humanity in the last few decades. Having grown up before it existed, I can't imagine how much I would personally pay just for Search to come back if Google all of a sudden disappeared. I would probably give up my car before I gave up Search.

Plenty of ways. Google maps provides accurate maps and route planning pretty much worldwide and for no (monetary) cost. I remember the days before when you had to pay Garmin £60 for up to date maps.

Chrome, while heading the way of ie6 in it's dominance is a massive public benefit.

Search - given that it's free of charge, it is a hugely valuable tool and has changed the world in the last 20 years.

I think you can argue that they don't provide this altruisticly, but it's definitely been a positive impact

Just wanted to chime in that Google Maps was (is) huuuge. Instant access to such quality mas anywhere, anytime and even the street view project.

Google probably increases my productivity as a programmer by a factor of 100. I can't imagine what I would do without it. I remember reading programming books when I was much younger, and the rate of information gathering was orders of magnitude slower.

And that's just programming, a relatively niche use of Google, not to speak of any other occupation or task that you might use it for, and that's just google search, not even chrome or maps or... Google has revolutionized the world.

Even if we ignore the typical answer of finding information in library.

Even as a Search Engine, Google was miles ahead of its competitors during its early days. Yahoo, AltaVista, and plenty of smaller ones like Ask.com..... They were crap.

I dont like Google since the day they said they do no Evil. But there is no way I can ignore the Impact Google has to the Internet and the world.

Modifying the news feed algorithm to send less traffic to traditional news sites contributed to a lot of layoffs and general turmoil in the industry. This resulted in major animosity toward Facebook among journalists, which has encouraged them to highlight the negative effects of Facebook. These narratives encourage regulatory action against Facebook, which is now one of the main risks facing the company. I’d go so far as to say this little revenue-optimizing move may be a major cause of the media’s turn from fawning over big tech to trying to take it down. Similar story with the fights over payment for Google News previews in Europe. Squeezing journalists financially is a great example of a penny-wise, pound-foolish move.

The original goal of reducing news prevalence was to show less outrage/clickbait and show more friends and family content. Of course, hindsight shows that the move was of limited efficacy, but it's disingenuous to suggest that it was done in order to 'squeeze journalists'.

I don’t think harming journalists was the motive, but it was the outcome, and in hindsight it seems predictable. At least it should serve as a lesson to anyone who faces a similar decision in the future.

So is the lesson here “the media will destroy any social network that doesn’t feed the clickbait-outrage machine”? :(

I’m not sure. If Facebook had been more surgical to send less traffic to clickbait listicles, but more to Prestigious Investigative Journalists, would the outcome have been the same? Did the unemployed listicle authors find their passion and become serious journalists working the tech beat?

Facebook traffic is fairly low quality, one time type visits. Any publisher who built their business with a dependency on FB traffic was doomed to fail no matter what if they didn't convert those users to email registrations, subscribers etc..

He may be good, but he's not so good that it's hard to find mistakes. The old Open Graph Search, email accounts, re-writing everyone's address books to include FB email accounts, Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon , not actually letting users delete their data, letting genocide coordinators operate openly on the platform?

Not only that. NOT selling to Yahoo! in 2006 for one freaking billion dollar, despite everyone, including the entire board, was in favor of the deal. Imagine that. You're 22 years old, this is the first company you co-founded, and you can walk await with something in the ballpark of $400-450M. Set for life. And instead, you do everything you can to turn the deal away, and keep building.

This single episode is, in my view, enough to determine that MZ is a very special entrepreneur.

And yes, agree: privacy, Cambridge Analytica, etc, all topics that deserve attention. But purely looking at his skills, he's simply a genius with iron balls.

If he's a genius, maybe he could at least try to make something the value of which is not only measured in dollar bills.

I have a great instrument to connect to friends who for various reasons live very very far away. We would not stay close if it wasn’t Facebook. We could call, we could send emails or messages, but realistically we wouldn’t do it (or not that often) if there wasn’t medium like Facebook. Being able to stay connected is priceless.

Donalds fan club thinks he is genius too.

Obama's fan club thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace prize.

Elon's fan club is convinced a boring red dirt ball where nothing lives is the place to be.

Greta's fanclub think she is Jesus

The Kardashian fan club think she is the greatest feminist in history.

Who we admire says a lot about who we are and our individual Needs much more than it says anything about the people we prop up.

Well, that comment of yours says about you more than about what it meant to say, if we want to continue these ad hominem arguments. But we should not use these arguments in polite and constrictive conversation or debate. (Edit: typos)

What are you talking about?

I do not admire MZ. But if you ask me if he's a good CEO/leader, the example I mentioned is clear proof that he's a rare breed.

You thinking I'm a fanboy shows very little respect for what I expressed before.

This is the best set of personal attacks I have ever seen. I could give you full marks if you could substantiate this with some evidence.

It's very easy. You can do it!

Obama actually did win the Nobel peace prize...

I think the question is whether he deserved it or not.

> Many business are built and scaled on Facebook Ads.

Completely agreed. Not to mention that their M&A strategy has also been nothing short of a master class: from Instagram, to WhatsApp, to Oculus. Money making machine indeed.

To that end: is it possible today to build a major VC-funded consumer facing tech company (eg Oculus) without being forced to sell to an “evil” (privacy/human rights-disrespecting amoral multinational) acquirer?

Snap is the only example I can think of that remained independent so far, and even they are one App Store flipped bit away from being out of business. Are there “never Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon” startups that have or would be able to raise nine figures to pursue big projects?

Is that even a viable path, or is the winning endgame always just being acquired by Big Tech and Big Tech only?

I guess my question is “Is avoiding major/typical VC funding the only way to “win” and not end up as FAANG staff?”

The reason I ask is because I already have a perfectly comfortable lifestyle business, and would love to pursue something larger (that requires funding and a medium-sized staff) but there is no amount of money or equity that would make me ever be okay with working for a company that helps governments abuse human rights, which is 100% of Big Tech these days. Is there any third path?

No. But there are some different (and new) approaches / alternatives to the VC surveillance capitalist cycle we see when it comes to building a business.

Be bootstrapped and profitable (Basecamp/Indie Hackers) or independent and ethical (Small Tech) [0].

You don't need to have the same goals as cancer to win in the tech space.

[0] https://small-tech.org/

I believe this is a false dichotomy. It's not cancerous to want to pursue e.g. advanced hardware (Oculus) or hundreds of millions of users (Instagram, WhatsApp, et c).

I refuse to believe that with capital being what it is today, there is no funded route to having e.g. 100M users that doesn't eventually involve working for the big five.

OWS has done it (in a strange way), so there are definitely some paths, if a bit weird.

Those are just quick examples I listed, (you could have both or utilise crowdfunding!) I do find that companies that need to continuously raise cash from venture capitalists (as many startups do) don't have the customers (not users) interests at heart and are already financially and morally bankrupt. (They are already thinking about a 10x exit rather than focusing on building a great profitable business!)

> It's not cancerous to want to pursue e.g. advanced hardware (Oculus) or hundreds of millions of users (Instagram, WhatsApp, etc).

All of this (and every startup needs this to grow) is usually at the cost of the customers privacy. All the time.

> I refuse to believe that with capital being what it is today, there is no funded route to having e.g. 100M users that doesn't eventually involve working for the big five.

You don't have to sell out to the big tech companies, just be a regular profitable business from the start and don't spy on your customers.

> The reason I ask is because I already have a perfectly comfortable lifestyle business, and would love to pursue something larger (that requires funding and a medium-sized staff) but there is no amount of money or equity that would make me ever be okay with working for a company that helps governments abuse human rights, which is 100% of Big Tech these days. Is there any third path?

You mention Snapchat, and I think that's a great example. I'm somewhat cynical, having tried (and failed) several times launching a consumer-facing social-style app, but Snapchat gives me hope. For years, it was a pretty mediocre one-trick-pony, but it just goes to show how important user metrics are. It didn't start out with millions of dollars (like TikTok) and it didn't start out with influencers (like Clubhouse). It just resonated with high school and college kids, and that was enough.

Oculus was not forced to sell. They sold because the price was really high plus it gave them a guarantee of huge investment into the technology going forward without raising new rounds all the time or trying to make profits. But they could have stayed independent if they wanted.

Some hits for sure, but also a lot of duds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

The tbh acquisition was a complete waste of time and money. Time will tell how giphy works out...

Hard disagree. TBH had great disruptive potential -- it was huge in middle/high schools. If someone else acquired it, FB was looking at possible a re-run of the Snapchat playbook, where a younger audience not yet on FB was lost to them.

> Facebook was the last Silicon Valley company to create something that literally has disrupted the way we live and interact. All the other ones that supposedly were on that road are barely alive (e.g: Uber).

I don't know...

* Apple disrupted the way we live and interact more recently (iPhone).

* Uber & Lyft may be barely alive currently, but mostly/only because of Covid - they were doing decently enough before then. Same for AirBnb, though IMHO they're not as disruptive.

* If Facebook counts despite poorly executed earlier companies attempting the same idea, then Netflix probably counts for this list too - crappy cable TV on-demand existed before them, but widespread changes in how we consume video didn't occur until the rise of Netflix streaming.

* Amazon didn't really take over all of online shopping until around the same time Facebook was exploding, if I remember.

* Widespread consumer access to GPS - starting with Garmins in cars, then later smartphones - didn't really happen until well into the Facebook era as well.

* The dominance of the SaaS model mostly came after Facebook too.

Yeah I understand all your points. But I'm saying that no company has been able to replicate the rapid rise and dominance of Facebook since the latter went public.

Maybe in the next decade Uber or AirBnB or one of these SaaS players will have a major explosive new product or service, like Apple had with the iPod and later with the iPhone, and become a real tech behemoth. Time will tell.

Amazon isn't a SV company.

I was interpreting it as a metonym (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy) for tech startups in general. Uber, Lyft, and AirBnb aren't literally "Silicon Valley" companies either since they are based in SF.

> Facebook was the last Silicon Valley company to create something that literally has disrupted the way we live and interact.

I feel completely out of the loop. What has facebook created that is so impactful ?

I see them as a company that incrementaly executed better than the previous social networks and successfully killed/absorbed competition. But is there any critical thing they really created from the end user point of view ?

I don’t mind the downvotes, but would want some guidance. I don’t use facebook, so I’d genuinely want to know what it has disrupted in the way you live that the other SNS won’t do.

They are so incredibly large in user numbers that they have the ability to reach almost anyone in developed countries through their platforms.

It's not the product but its magnitude. That's the disruption IMO.

But is it a disruption if they operate as a larger version of an already successful phenomenon ?

I’d see how a service like Streetview would be seen as disruptive because of bringing a fringe fonctionnality to a mass market in a unprecedented scale.

But I feel like calling Facebook disruptive is like saying Samsung is revolutionnary, by the sheer massive number of smartphones they sell.

I mean. We clearly have different definitions of disruptive. For me disruptive != innovative.

For me disruptive boils down to how likely is something to produce a change in the behaviors of a general population and improve (or worsen) their lives.

Streeview is very innovative, for sure. But it hasn't changed me or anyone that I know in any significant way.

On the other hand Facebook services allow me to stay in touch with my elder parents who live in Colombia and stay in touch with people I care about. The technology or the concepts may not be incredibly innovative but I can characterize them as disruptive just because of their size (reach).

Also I have discovered interesting products through Instagram Ads. That seems minor but ultimately many of those things have had a certain impact in my overall quality of life.

I can very, very easily find my old eighth grade teacher and thank her for being an influence on my life. Good luck doing that with any other social network.

I'm also out of the loop, there were tons of social media companies before Facebook so no creation of something new and disruptive. The comment you are responding to reads to me as survivor-ship fallacy of whatever social media company managed to move away from investor money and into ad money in an effective way. Which, in my opinion, seems like a luck factor mixed with more luck regarding on how the end users react to it (or if ad-free investor backed competition came at that moment too). In another world, MySpace would've done this transition but they didn't and someone would be arguing that MySpace and Tom is an excellent executive and that only them could achieve what was achieved.

Or even Flickr. There were also lots of more regional social network sites going on, at least in Europe.

> What has facebook created that is so impactful ?

facebook.com

> I feel completely out of the loop. What has facebook created that is so impactful ?

Social network that spawns most of the world. It's a very valid to argue about upsides or downsides of it, but no one else came even close in creating such a huge, powerful and diverse network.

This is a matter of scale more than disruption though.

For instance Shimano crushed all other cycling equipment vendors in an unprecedented way, at a scale never see before and built a worldwide empire.

But did Shimano’s entry fundamentally change the field ? I’d argue no. They iterated and executed flawlessly, actually not disrupting what was a good business to them from the start.

I’d argue Facebook is in the same position. They brought unprecedented scale and became the massively dominant player, while keeping the field mostly the same in quality (targeted ads, social games etc. were already a thing, older SNS already pivoted on that before facebook coming in)

Facebook broke through. We could have easily had a world with dozens of major social networks, each catering to a different subset of the world and consumer groups. Facebook, though, was able to gain nearly universal acceptance -- outside of countries where it is explicitly banned. There was no guarantee one company would take that prize. In fact it was more likely that we'd have Reddit, MySpace, TikTok, etc all catering to different audiences with no one platform that basically everyone at least has an account for.

We get it, you <strikethrough>run Arch</strikethrough>don't use FB.

1. Their Ads product. Seems obvious today, but was revolutionary. There are an incredible number of companies, from massive DTC brands to SMBs across the US, that would not exist today if not for Facebook.

2. No other social network has even come close to how much FB has connected the world.

>simply the best digital distribution channel besides Google

It appears Google just had their first revenue decline ever. I guess it was anticipated, and people aren't particularly freaking out, but I wonder if it will be a turning point in hindsight a year from now.

Travel ads/flights are huge for them compared to Facebook.

>what they created is simply the best digital distribution channel besides Google. Many business are built and scaled on Facebook Ads.

Facebook cheated. They stole the advertising industry from print and broadcast with lies. Google helped, but AFAIK with fewer lies. Facebook doesn't have a Jeff Dean (or pg/Yahoo for that matter), they had the Napster guy. Facebook created nothing more than an attractive nuisance.

Facebook is an object lesson in the amorality of capital. As long as they maintain an agreeable narrative to smooth over questionable ethics along the way, they will be called a miracle. Capitalism is defined as a system inclined to accept success on its terms without question, and someone like Zuck who tells a vague story about FB's purpose just seems like gravy, feels like transparency.

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