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Advertising revenues on social networks have historically been pretty poor.

I think what O'Reilly was getting at was people forming their startups that essentially chase the latest trends in what now amounts to a bubble. He makes a valid argument and we could all be looking back at what he said in the future and only realize then just how spot on he was.

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I think you're probably right, but I also think there's a lazy argument out there that you could go halt malaria instead of making ad money, and that's a stupid argument; make the ad money and spend it on malaria if you're that committed.

You don't have to fight malaria or stop making money form ads. If you're going to make an ad supported app at least make it do something useful (GMail is one example of a useful ad supported app).

That's an argument against the entire entertainment industry. This is a debate over aesthetics, and I don't have much more to say about it.

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