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The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

economist.com

11–20 of 236 posts

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#11

From reading some of the stuff Yahoo put out back in their prime. I always got the sense that they thought they would never fall and were maybe a bit invincible. I think Zuckerberg and Facebook in general, are very aware that Facebook is on the decline, they need to diversify. That's why they bought Instagram and used it to flight Snap. That's why they spent such an insane amount on WhatsApp. Zuckerberg knows they ne…

Simply, they can't create the next big thing outside of facebook. That's why they bought things.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#12
post #9

Yahoo failed, in part, because its competitors were better. Being better than Facebook doesn't mean just replicating its technology, it means having a better social graph. That's a hard problem to solve.

Doesn’t need to be a better graph, it needs to be good enough to grow.

Most FB users probably aren’t “power users”.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#13
post #9

Yahoo failed, in part, because its competitors were better. Being better than Facebook doesn't mean just replicating its technology, it means having a better social graph. That's a hard problem to solve.

Having a better service, at this point wouldn't mean that Facebook would fail.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#14

From reading some of the stuff Yahoo put out back in their prime. I always got the sense that they thought they would never fall and were maybe a bit invincible. I think Zuckerberg and Facebook in general, are very aware that Facebook is on the decline, they need to diversify. That's why they bought Instagram and used it to flight Snap. That's why they spent such an insane amount on WhatsApp. Zuckerberg knows they ne…

>Zuckerberg knows they need to create or acquire the next big thing to make it in the long

Isn't that exactly what yahoo did?

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#17

> A senior marketer for a large American bank says Facebook has made mistakes on measuring engagement, reach, views and other data for no fewer than 43 products. All of the mistakes, he notes, worked in the social-networking giant’s favour. “If these were true errors, wouldn’t you expect at least half to benefit marketers?” he asks. He expects to reduce how much his firm spends on Facebook and predicts that other mar…

Wait, Facebook has over 43 products? What are they?

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#18

Facebook is dead. It's just taking a long time for this to become apparent.

There's around 2.23 billion active users you might want to pass that message on to.

They are all old. Facebook will probably still be functioning for the next 40 years until it's users finally die and then it's over.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#19
post #9

Yahoo failed, in part, because its competitors were better. Being better than Facebook doesn't mean just replicating its technology, it means having a better social graph. That's a hard problem to solve.

Facebook is one vision of ~modern life. Social networks are massively overrated in term of human value IMO. I think whatsapp is probably closer to what would be useful and not toxic. I don't believe people need profiles and graphs and whatever.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#20

Facebook is dead. It's just taking a long time for this to become apparent.

There's around 2.23 billion active users you might want to pass that message on to.

Active users as a statistic reminds me of employment rate.

It sounds useful, but it's not really that useful, because it's not really measuring the interesting thing, it just sounds like it is.

For example, I think the stat you're quoting is monthly active users. If everyone used to engage with FB 20 times a day but now does so once a day (or once a week, or once a month) the active user count will stay the same, but the reality is very different.

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