I am always a bit surprised that Facebook ended up as reliant on advertising revenue as they are. I feel like they missed opportunities to replace Craigslist as the de facto online classifieds and to offer a payment system like Apple Pay. Perhaps these are only obvious in hindsight. I feel that most of their issues stem from their complete revenue reliance on advertising. It forces them to make decisions about their…
I used to work at the biggest social network in the Netherlands. They tried to make a push for becoming a classifieds site and also payments before Facebook, but neither of these worked out.
If FB thought they'd have made more money going after Craiglist and PayPal, then that's what they would have done ten years ago.