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Comment by webwright | Hacker News Reader

You should do some google digging on early Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon commentary. Granted, Facebook and Twitter don't have Google-level revenues, but early commentary about them was pretty much "they CAN'T make money on a social product". Facebook made over 4 billion dollars in 2011. Amazon's first years had some great commentary as well.

It turns out that EVERY SINGLE TIME someone builds a product that zillions of people love in an enduring way, they are able to hire world-class value-extraction experts who can make zillions of dollars.

Pinterest has the extra advantage of intent-- shoppers pinning products that they want/love gives Pinterest a lot more power to advertise cleverly than Facebook/Twitter. Unsure about Snapchat and RapGenius, but the key question is "With that audience and that growth, what could the smartest people in the industry turn them into if they were armed with functionally infinite spending money?"

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> "With that audience and that growth, what could the smartest people in the industry turn them into if they were armed with functionally infinite spending money?"

Ad-ridden, privacy-destroying malware I'd imagine. Since that's all the "smartest people" in the biz are working on: getting people to click ads and subverting the web.

The Facebook Jr's out there won't like to hear it but that's the cold truth.

"Ad-ridden, privacy-destroying malware"

I was commenting on the revenue potential, not the ethics or quality of the product at the end of the process.

That said, I still love Google Search-- it's nigh magical how it shortens the distance between my brain and the answers it craves at any given moment. And I still watch youtube (yet another service that some said would never make money), even with the ads. And I still use Facebook to stay connected with friends while I travel the world for the next 6 months or so. I don't see any (present or future) privacy consequences with these services, and the ads hover right around the "tolerable" range.

No privacy consequences with Facebook? I don't think that sounds right. They've been hell-bent on destroying the term since conception which isn't good for most users not mindful of that.

What are the consequences, though? Yes, they have a lot of data about me. What can they do with it that damages me? And even if we can imagine something that benefits them at my expense, every news outlet DREAMS of publishing a "Facebook ruins user's life with privacy invasion" story. Doesn't take many of those for wholesale evacuation of Facebook, does it?

> What can they do with it that damages me?

You can take your pick here and see what's most important to you: http://pleasedeletefacebook.com/

The consequences range from enabling the surveillance state, data theft, NSA slurping, job loss, employer intrusion, bullying, lowering of credit scores, depression, stalking, jail.

These are some interesting ones to name a few:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/26/technology/social/facebook-c...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/finding_sociop...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/13/1247257/facebook-scan...

> Doesn't take many of those for wholesale evacuation of Facebook, does it?

Sadly, I wouldn't bet on it.

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