When everyone is still actively building their friend list (remember this started for college students) its an amazing product because it brings you closer to people in a new way and allows for curation without investing a ton into AI/ML.
For people who stay in a static social bubbles for long times (e.g., your parents, your friends from HS who didn't move to a coastal city) it's also perfect, because they tend to value content related to their social group more than something new and interesting.
But for the highest value users (e.g., the ones with high-paying knowledge-based jobs and a willingness to try new things) the social graph will never keep up with their lives. Bad content from the edges of the graph will slowly creep into feeds (MLMs being a prime example) and those high-value users will seek out new platforms that conform better to their interests.
Instagram was a brilliant stop-gap, but Mark never saw the writing on the wall about algorithmic content (probably b/c Bytedance had the advantage of cutting its teeth in China first) and is just too far behind to ever really catch up.
So now he's trying to out-future Bytedance with VR (and even got them to burn $1bn on Pico), but unless he has some hard-tech rabbit to pull out of his hat, there's just not anything there.
We may very well be seeing the largest (negative) turn-around story in history since Yahoo! play out in front of our eyes.
They already have, and if the US Government would allow them to make another acquisition over $1bn, they already would have (I guarantee 5 different Biz Dev associates have made very long PowerPoints about Roblox and Rec Room only to be told the idea is DOA).
It's actually kind of amazing that Mark's off-putting personality and desire to remain the face of the company is what will kill it (let's just hope Aaron Sorkin stays alive long enough for the sequel, because it might rival Citizen Kane).
When everyone is still actively building their friend list (remember this started for college students) its an amazing product because it brings you closer to people in a new way and allows for curation without investing a ton into AI/ML.
For people who stay in a static social bubbles for long times (e.g., your parents, your friends from HS who didn't move to a coastal city) it's also perfect, because they tend to value content related to their social group more than something new and interesting.
But for the highest value users (e.g., the ones with high-paying knowledge-based jobs and a willingness to try new things) the social graph will never keep up with their lives. Bad content from the edges of the graph will slowly creep into feeds (MLMs being a prime example) and those high-value users will seek out new platforms that conform better to their interests.
Instagram was a brilliant stop-gap, but Mark never saw the writing on the wall about algorithmic content (probably b/c Bytedance had the advantage of cutting its teeth in China first) and is just too far behind to ever really catch up.
So now he's trying to out-future Bytedance with VR (and even got them to burn $1bn on Pico), but unless he has some hard-tech rabbit to pull out of his hat, there's just not anything there.
We may very well be seeing the largest (negative) turn-around story in history since Yahoo! play out in front of our eyes.