<story><title>The growing short case on Facebook and Google</title><url>https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1281630456807452677</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>appleflaxen</author><text>How is that analysis different than myspace 15 years ago (or whenever)?&lt;p&gt;social media platforms are extremely durable until the next hot new thing comes along.&lt;p&gt;There is a new generation you need to engage every ~5 years or so, and they see facebook as the platform to talk with grandma.&lt;p&gt;FB made some genius acquisitions with instagram and whatsapp, but eventually they are going to fail to acquire the challenger, and when that happens the fall can be swift.</text></item><item><author>dannyw</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t see much merit in this thesis. Google and Facebook are the gatekeepers to attention. Taxes, regulation and antitrust action may reduce their gross margins, but where else is the value going to go?&lt;p&gt;As TikTok and other companies become more popular, you&amp;#x27;ll see the US government more protective of FB and Google. An abusive duopoly with Western alignment is better than a social media monopoly from China. The continued rise of TikTok actually simultaneously reduces government&amp;#x27;s will to act on big US tech.&lt;p&gt;Neither FB or Google are in China; so the Chinese government&amp;#x27;s ability to hurt those companies are limited.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>9nGQluzmnq3M</author><text>Google is not a social media platform, and they aren&amp;#x27;t even trying to be one anymore now that G+ has been scrapped.&lt;p&gt;Sure, they could be displaced by a better search engine, but that&amp;#x27;s a whole different kettle of fish.</text></comment>
<story><title>The growing short case on Facebook and Google</title><url>https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1281630456807452677</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>appleflaxen</author><text>How is that analysis different than myspace 15 years ago (or whenever)?&lt;p&gt;social media platforms are extremely durable until the next hot new thing comes along.&lt;p&gt;There is a new generation you need to engage every ~5 years or so, and they see facebook as the platform to talk with grandma.&lt;p&gt;FB made some genius acquisitions with instagram and whatsapp, but eventually they are going to fail to acquire the challenger, and when that happens the fall can be swift.</text></item><item><author>dannyw</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t see much merit in this thesis. Google and Facebook are the gatekeepers to attention. Taxes, regulation and antitrust action may reduce their gross margins, but where else is the value going to go?&lt;p&gt;As TikTok and other companies become more popular, you&amp;#x27;ll see the US government more protective of FB and Google. An abusive duopoly with Western alignment is better than a social media monopoly from China. The continued rise of TikTok actually simultaneously reduces government&amp;#x27;s will to act on big US tech.&lt;p&gt;Neither FB or Google are in China; so the Chinese government&amp;#x27;s ability to hurt those companies are limited.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>moron4hire</author><text>To say that Facebook replaced MySpace (and therefore, it could also happen to Facebook) is not exactly accurate. Or rather, not the full picture.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ourworldindata.org&amp;#x2F;rise-of-social-media&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ourworldindata.org&amp;#x2F;rise-of-social-media&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Facebook surpassed MySpace in monthly user count by April 2008. MySpace hit its peak in December 2008. This wasn&amp;#x27;t a &amp;quot;migration&amp;quot; from MySpace to Facebook. It was Facebook out growing MySpace.&lt;p&gt;But that doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily mean it could happen again.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Facebook grew at a time when social media usage was also growing. We don&amp;#x27;t have a huge, untapped pool of users from which to fuel a &amp;quot;Facebook killer&amp;quot;. There was also a significant difference in how the sites we originally used, so there was interest from a lot of early users in using both.&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that any site that might eventually supplant Facebook as the dominant social media force would need to grow in an underserved market before expanding into the general market, and do it in such a way that Facebook doesn&amp;#x27;t notice and come crush them first.&lt;p&gt;What strikes me is that the peak year for MySpace and the year Facebook surpassed it was also the year that smartphones started to take off. Facebook, being the far &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; site, would have been much more usable in early smartphone browsers. And smartphones were a huge part of the growth of social media. So it suggests that not only does a Facebook competitor need an untapped market to serve, it needs a platform on which it can create a significantly better experience than what Facebook can do.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Facebook is ahead of the game on this issue. Why do you think they spend so much money on Oculus and VR? There are leaked memos from Zuckerberg that explicitly spell out this strategy. They are taking over the platform early to avoid ceding the space to a future competitor.</text></comment>