> TBD Lab’s researchers have come to view many Meta executives as interested only in improving the social media business
That cannot have been a surprise to anyone joining.
That cannot have been a surprise to anyone joining.
It doesn’t provide any value to reframe it this way, unless you think it’s some big secret that ads are the main source of revenue for these businesses.
They were kinda the first real Web 2.0 social media site, with a social graph, privacy controls, a developer API, tagging, RSS feeds.
I feel that they never really got to their full potential exactly because these big VC-backed dumping operations in social media (like Facebook) were able to kill them in the crib.
If we're going to accept that social media is a natural monopoly: great. Regulate them strictly, as you should with any monopoly.
Del.icio.us is the same story. Good product ahead of its time, bought by Yahoo and died. Could have been Pinterest.
Which is very reassuring considering some of them are fairly obviously on the wrong side of history with very naive viewpoints https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852246
They do broadcast TV, the purpose of which is to display ads. That does make sense.
> “Google doesn’t have a search business, they have an ad business.”
When Google started out, in the "don't be evil", simple home page days, they were a search company. It is hardly true any more, ads are now the centre of their business.
> “Amazon doesn’t have a retail business, they have an ad business.”
Well, duh! Quite obvious these days. That is where they get the lion's share of the revenue, outside AWS.
I am impressed, you hit the nail on the head!
It would have the side effect of making the whole business less ghoulish and manipulative, since the operators wouldn't be incentivized to maximize eyeball hours.
It's impossible to imagine this because government regulation is so completely corrupted that a decades-long anticompetitive dumping scheme is allowed to occur without the slightest pushback.
Of course perhaps it’s a bit different now since most people consume content from a small set of sources, making social media largely the same as traditional media. But then traditional media also has trouble with being supported by subscriptions.
The bigger problem is the monopoly. They would charge $4/mo. Then add ads on top. Then up it to $5/mo. Then..
Scaling is harder. But you can have a niche which works fine.