I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

It wasn't. So they the competition quickly routed around them and made them irrelevant. Where's Microsoft "monopoly" today?

In a free market a monopolistic company is just an invitation for the competition to a rich easily accessible lunch. The (naturally occurring) monopoly is short-lived.

Unless there is regulation. Regulation raises the barrier of entry, discourages start-ups and thus protects the monopolistic company from the competition.

It's quite logical, really.

> It wasn't.

It was ruled in 2001 that Microsoft, indeed, had a monopoly on the PC operating system market which they used to overtake the browser market. They did this through private contracts with OEMs and distributors such that all PCs sold to customers were to include Windows and only Windows.

> Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others. [1]

> So they the competition quickly routed around them and made them irrelevant.

That's certainly true for some of their products, such as Internet Explorer, but certainly not for Windows on the desktop.

The PC operating system market is not the server or mobile OS market.

> Where's Microsoft "monopoly" today?

They own the PC operating system market.

> Unless there is regulation. Regulation raises the barrier of entry, discourages start-ups and thus protects the monopolistic company from the competition.

Microsoft created barriers of entry into both the PC operating system and browser markets through anti-competitive tactics. If by government regulation, you mean "court enforced contracts", I'd agree with your premise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

I meant it wasn't a governments mandated monopoly - I agree with you and that they built a monopoly through anti-competitive practices.

But my point is that didn't last as the market punished them for it and made them irrelevant. The market moved to mobiles and web and today they are a good player in the industry.

Even on desktop where they still enjoy a healthy margin, it's not monopoly: Windows is ~80% while Mac OS and others take the other 20%.

I realise re-reading my comment that this example wasn’t clear. Sorry about that.

I’ve dealt with dating and meeting people at parties before and after Facebook took over my social circle. Facebook meaningfully improved the experience for me, mainly through the two avowed goals of the platform: universality and “real” identity (I hate the word ‘real’ but it’s the most legible way to combine recognisable face photos, civil name, personal details and representative social graph). Yes, you can ask for a phone number, but that’s a rather transparent ask; the person you are asking it from usually doesn’t have enough context to know if they want to expose themselves that much, lead me to believe there is a chance, etc. In my case, I know for a fact that, if I had asked for it, she would have preferred to give it to me but would have not (she was in the process of breaking up and felt this was too early; she was fully single couple of days later, when I wrote to her).

During the earlier stages of dating, I believe that a ambiguity helps (and that is very much something that my American colleagues at Facebook disagreed with). I believe that by reaching out by being helpful rather than assertive, you can offer a less macho version of masculinity. Then again: if you knew me, you’d know I’m not good at this, at all. ‘Sliding in your DMs’ as it became known is not entirely positive, but it does take away some responsibility from a party that is not willing to appear keen. Male friends more attractive than I am have also noticed that it offers more initiative to female daters -- whether that’s the technology or the time, I can’t tell. It also allows you to hide or block unsuccessful attempts in a way that many social circles don’t.

One thing that is my experience and that is universal is that having a social graph helps greatly to pick partners: you have common friends you can rely on to insure the person is reliable, more context, things to talk about. Dating apps have taken those features in stride (and still have access to those, i.e. meaningfully more information than other apps have on the Facebook API). That does help compared to the stranger-in-a-bar deal. It might foster homophily, more superficial matching, etc., once again: I don’t know of an exhaustive study on the subject. However, I do know from working directly with that team that Facebook cares an is willing to build tools to help, and support companies trying to do the same.

I realise that my experience is anecdotic. That was my original point: a long list of anecdotic, positive experiences through Facebook. In that anecdote, I did find the courage to ask someone for their phone number, a while earlier, I did end up with someone else. She just wasn’t nearly as amazing, and that’s why I was hanging out, sad and single at that party. Had I known more about the first one, say, through Facebook, I would probably have realised faster that we were not meant for each other.

As an aside, your unlucky acquaintances present an intruiging statistical anomaly. Pure random chance would cause a failure rate like that about 0.1% of the time - I imagine the rate is considerably lower for real people, who by definition are more likely to vote for the winner. It's not so surprising to know one such person - 1 in 5 if you know 200 people - but you know 'quite a few', which rapidly brings it to thousands to one against. You should definitely consider putting some money on whoever they aren't voting for next election.

Unless of course they vote for third party candidates every election, in which case failure is guaranteed and voting is an entirely symbolic act.