Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.

I'm not so sure (for reasonable values of "forever"). From what I see, once some software hits a critical mass, it's nearly inextricable.

Look at Microsoft. Before they became a major player, the dominant OS and computer system would seem to shift every couple of years; Amiga, Commodore, Apple, etc., but once Microsoft became a major player they never really lost their grip. They continue to maintain that grip simply because so many people were familiarized on their systems and so much software was written for those systems. Does anyone really believe that someone looks at OS X and Windows these days and decides that Windows is objectively superior? Most people, even technical people who hate Apple's MO, would admit that OS X is better on its merits alone.

The reason that MS has dominated and continues to dominate is because of the software available for the platform. It's all about lock-in. People don't use Windows because it has more compelling features than OS X, they use Windows because they want to play games, buy software off the shelf and know it will run without any problems, or run their company's internal software.

Let's take Facebook as another example. For years there was a pretty constant, roughly bi-annual shift in the most prominent "social networking" site; LiveJournal, Friendster, Xanga, etc., until Facebook. Around 2008 Facebook began eating MySpace's lunch and Facebook remains undisputed social networking champ today with no signs of slowage.

I'm concerned that Facebook is the new Microsoft -- it has become the de-facto standard, and despite any number of superior features that may be developed in other systems, it doesn't look like anyone is going to be able to challenge Facebook seriously. Some would say that Google was perhaps the most worthy challenger, but even they have failed to really make a dent despite the fact that most of the world visits their search and email services daily.

I'm not sure exactly where that critical mass gets hit but I think it's hard to reverse once it happens. Maybe it's something like, "Once your grandparents use a certain program because everyone else does, it's relatively safe to call it 'ingrained'." I know that my grandma had no compulsion to create a MySpace profile even though she constantly [attempts to] check[s] Facebook now, and I also know that it'd be extremely difficult to train her to use a non-Windows interface.

    If the value provided by alternatives to CL were as superior as most
    HN readers believe them to be then END USERS would see that as well and
    migrate just like MySpace users migrated to FB.

This type of dilemma is known as a collective action problem. When these problems arise the best way forward is often to have a superauthority such as the government step in for everyone's benefit. For example, even though it is generally accepted that free trade increases the world's prosperity when it is practiced around the world, individual countries occasionally see immediate advantage in adopting mercantilist or protectionist economic policies. The GATT is an attempt to provide a superauthority to stop such practices, because the immediate gains possible when a country embargoes an enemy are not as valuable as a system where the majority of actors behave in open and unbiased ways.

The free market doesn't work on its own. When there are systemic problems in the way actors conduct business, judiciously applied regulation can help promote the public interest.

Craigslist disrupted the classifieds industry because it had first-mover advantage in a new medium, the Internet. It now abuses that advantage in order to not innovate or even compete.

The market is not working over time -- proof is how everyone complains about how crappy Craigslist is.

But a solution, for example, could be something like: legislators could force companies with over, say, 25% market share, that are mainly based on user-generated content, to not be able to sue other companies if those companies re-display information originally input by users, that is publicly visible on the site.

This wouldn't force Craigslist to alter its behavior one bit. But it would allow entrepreneurs to actually fight once again on the basis of their ideas, as opposed to whoever had first-mover advantage and subsequent network lock-in.

Its a loose loose scenario, much better to allow the reproductuon for everyone.

If you value users, don't hurt yourself to show it. Rather, don't shut off sites that save them hours of their limited and precious lifetime.