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

economist.com

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

#221

Post by propogandist »

product50 wrote: post #211
throwawaylolx wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they have done a relatively good job with Instagram and WhatsAp WhatsApp announced that they'll introduce ads, and the co-founder left the company due to privacy concerns.

That has nothing to do with whether WHatsapp will continue to grow or not.

Yes it does. Users of the platform today are uninterrupted by ads and have no reason to think about how the platform is mining their data -- many are unaware its owned by FB.

Depending on the intrusiveness of the ads, users may opt to move to another platform, which will lead to more people being pulled away from Whatsapp. FB will have to monetize aggressively to recoup investments and keep wallstreet happy, but users may not be very receptive to ads within their messaging platform.

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

#222

Post by mcintyre1994 »

robterrell wrote: post #217
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting to see how effectively they can keep that up now their VPN's been taken off the App Store.

Interesting, when did this happen? From the outside it definitely seems like it's been their x-ray vision for sure.

A few months ago: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/22/apple-facebook-onavo

Still seems to be gone, and seems like Apple have banned the data stuff they were doing.

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

#223

Post by pascalxus »

dkrich wrote: post #75

This seems implausible precisely because it’s the crowded view. But can anyone recall a time that the crowd correctly predicted the ascent of an unpopular product or the descent of a popular one? I’m old enough to remember Yahoo’s rise and fall. There was a time people thought Zuckerberg was a greedy fool for turning down a $1 billion bid from Yahoo. Oh yeah did we forget about that? Yahoo failed because they were ou…

Not all businesses need to innovate or die. Just look at craigslist. Due to the nature of a 2 sided marketplace and the catch-22 challenge of acquiring a sufficient userbase, other competitors that innovated weren't able to compete.

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

#224

Post by tivert »

rmason wrote: post #22
King-Aaron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What matters is the DAU or daily active users. I'd be willing to bet that number is dropping.

> What matters is the DAU or daily active users. I'd be willing to bet that number is dropping.

I think what really matters is something like user actions/day. Anecdotally, Facebook engagement seems to be growing down but perhaps not yet in a way that would show up as a DAU drop (which I assume counts someone with even the barest interaction with the site as "active").

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

#225

Post by tivert »

MarkMc wrote: post #132
MagnaEterna wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They might be all old in US and Europe. But in India and other third world countries Facebook seems to be doing OK with young people.

Facebook makes far more money per user in the US or Europe. Third world activity won't be able to make up for the revenue drop if the bottom falls out of Facebook's first world properties.

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

#226

Post by RichardCA »

ksec wrote: post #135
wybiral wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best non-yahoo similarity I can find is what Google is doing with Blogger. That's a good point. But to be fair everything "social" that Google has touched has died with the exception of YouTube. In fact Google really hasn't done a great job holding onto many other arenas than their main ones. Blogger has been blasted by Medium. Knol was outlasted by Quora. Google Code was beat by Github. Their "shopping" attemp…

The problem with Google is exactly the same as Microsoft in the 90s. They just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. What that means is, I don't mean it in a small way but in a big way. - Steve Jobs.

It's worthwhile to hear the whole quote in context:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxOywaoUKo

I would say Google started out with a "Spirit of Enlightenment" but lost the plot.

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

#227

Post by hrktb »

danso wrote: post #130
hrktb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is simply no viable competition for Facebook in market right now like what Yahoo had in terms of Google. I don’t know if it’s your argument for the decline of facebook being false, but it doesn’t have to come from competition or viable alternatives. People stopping doing something happens all the time, companies going down because of decreasing interest in their service is a normal thing.

Which companies of Facebook's size and dominance have gone out because people simply stopped using them? The demises of Sears and Toys R Us were huge news, despite the obvious fact that they had long been beaten by competitors.

For companies the size of facebook, it usually comes with disrupton of the whole industry making incumbants obsolete when people flock to the new behaviors.

That’s in part what happened to Kodak / Polaroid, or Blockbuster, ot Blackerry / Nokia. That’s not competition per se as other companies aren’t chalenging the incumbant, it’s the whole landscape that changes.

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

#228

Post by egfx »

damontal wrote: post #198
nolok wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yahoo failed because they were out-innovated The worst part is that Yahoo innovated a lot ... In incubators, side projects, etc ... But they failed to bring their innovations to their main products, or to turn their side things into full blown products. They had no plan, neither overall or per product. Take emails for exemple, for the longest time (and still now, although not as dominating) THE key to user identity…

That reminds me of yahoo pipes. Cool idea but I don’t think it went anywhere.

Pipes was the best thing to come out of Yahoo. They prematurely killed it off. Way ahead of it's time and a product with seriously good utility, unlike Wave.

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

#230

Post by grey-area »

dkrich wrote: post #75

This seems implausible precisely because it’s the crowded view. But can anyone recall a time that the crowd correctly predicted the ascent of an unpopular product or the descent of a popular one? I’m old enough to remember Yahoo’s rise and fall. There was a time people thought Zuckerberg was a greedy fool for turning down a $1 billion bid from Yahoo. Oh yeah did we forget about that? Yahoo failed because they were ou…

I agree they’ve made savvy acquisitions, mostly in stock, which boosted their perceived value. Facebook are really vulnerable - they rely on trust from advertisers and clients, and have one stream of income - advertising. This will be very vulnerable in a downturn (which incidentally is what destroyed yahoo).

Say what you will about the ethics of the company but

Thanks. They have always been entirely lacking in ethics, from they trust me, to zynga, to fake ad metrics, to illegal Russian ads, to Soros smears. This makes it hard for anyone to trust them.

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