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‘Your Map Is Wrong’

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Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#41

Post by usrn »

robocat wrote: post #8

Full text: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’ – P2P.AI On stage with John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly at the 2010 Web2.0 Summit, Mark Zuckerberg stared at the Summit backdrop, that had a map with various consumer technology areas that have been ‘conquered’, charted out. “Your Map is Wrong,” Zuckerberg said. “The biggest part of the map has to be uncharted territory — this map makes it seem like it’s zero-sum, but it’s not. We’re buil…

I really don't like Zuckerberg and expected to disagree with him (especially about maps, everyone gets maps wrong (especially especially on computers) but this isn't a map of the earth.) This sounds right to me. Every time someone says we've figured everything out they're always wrong. There's always more to understand.

I don't think Facebook legitimately adds value, I think it's entirely parasitic. But we haven't discovered everything there is to know about talking with each other.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#42

Post by [deleted] »

golergka wrote: post #14
seydor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.

> Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.

[deleted]

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#43

Post by bigDinosaur »

golergka wrote: post #14
seydor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.

> Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.

Housewives never successfully sold cupcakes before Google, Facebook, and Instagram? Citation needed! I don't think that's obviously true.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#44

Post by balderdash »

Sounds like an allusion to blue ocean strategy

“ BLUE OCEANS, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today – the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid.”

https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strateg...

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#45

Post by jasode »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #38
golergka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also use a lot of other advertisement methods, which were much less cost-effective and make their businesses unprofitable overall.

Most of those ads were free "back in my days" here.. you got a "postcard" in each of those magazines, and could post an ad (limited length, text only) for free... how do you thing people sold cars before the internet? And yes, facebook is more cost effective, because people don't get paid for their data... if people got paid for viewing ads and having their data gathered (like they used to be, market research groups…

>how do you thing people sold cars before the internet?

You're not following the particular context of your subthread and inadvertently moving the goalposts.

The side conversation you're replying to was niche businesses with niche customers e.g. gp's example of "small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes)"

Buying ad space in a local newspaper is a waste of money for _small_ businesses like that because the subset of readers interested in paying for homemade cupcakes is too tiny. There's a threshold where it's just not financially feasible to pay $$$ targeted at a general audience in the hopes of converting the subset of that audience into customer revenue.

On the other hand, cars are purchased by everybody and the profit margins are also higher to get a return-on-investment when spending for ads in local newspapers.

Mabye a better example than housewife cupcakes is the niche video educational content on Youtube that's supported by advertising. The niche videos from Animagraffs, Practical Engineering, etc with micro-audiences wouldn't be economically viable on traditional network tv or even PBS. It required the long-tail of the internet matching the marketplace of viewers + creators + advertisers.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#47

Post by m0llusk »

The product that lifted Apple out of mediocrity and into the public eye was the iPod. The iPod, especially in its initial release, had a feature list that was explicitly derived from the failings of competing products. The idea was to take and dominate the mobile music player market. All of the biggest power moves Steve Jobs made were about eating someone else's lunch.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#48

Post by AndyJames »

cehrlich wrote: post #4

Zuckerberg is fundamentally right [1], and I think it's a good observation that many people fail to make. But I think it's companies other than Facebook/Meta that are creating the new value. [1] https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...

I agree with you however truly innovative things that are not making anyone poorer are way rarer than author of this post suggests. Even Steve jobs devices, given here as an example, was taking part of the cake from someone else. First thing that came to my mind is original VCS made in 1972 by Bell Labs. This was an invention that genuinely created profit from place where no one else was making any money.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#49

Post by mlatu »

dan-robertson wrote: post #27
mlatu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he is right in a way that makes it hard to see what facebook is turning into profit: the users attention. sure they are creating a space without taking away volume for other people to build there, but nobody will care about the other things because a proper map of the internet is not concerned with what is there, but what a given user spends their attention on.

I think the argument which is charitable to Facebook is that they make money by more efficiently matching advertisements to slots: advertisers are less willing to pay for generic slots in a newspaper than targeted slots because, in theory, a slot seen by someone more desirable. Facebook do advanced targeting to allow slots to be sold at closer to their fair value by making buyers better informed and they take a fee f…

i mean, of course i want the best THINGS for my bucks, so advertising good wares is kind of desirable...

but perhaps that is not enough. perhaps the scope needs to include production of wares: i dont just want inferior wares to not be advertised, but rather not even made. time, effort and resources wasted on trash products are a shame we are going to feel painfuly in the coming decades if humanity ever wakes up from the capitalist dream

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#50

Post by registeredcorn »

>there is no point in asking the customer what they need because they wouldn’t know until it is given to them.

Although I understand the sentiment, I have to disagree with it. The mindset that people are either: uninformed, misinformed, or unaware of what they need is a kind of idea that pushes one towards a sort of syndrome that assumes:

1) The public, as a whole, is too stupid to think for themselves

2) The public, as a whole, needs YOU to show them how "forward thinking" (smart) you are (and how stupid they are)

If we draw out that line of thinking a bit further, it also seems to hint at this tedious Western idea that, "If I don't do this, no one else will". In my view, that is not so much an entrepreneurial mindset, and moreso sheer, unrestrained arrogance. It is a roundabout way of saying, "No one else will ever do this, because only I CAN do this." It assumes that you are the defacto - the ONLY - creator of new things.

I dislike that because although there surely are stupid people in the world, however, we are also PART of that public. This mindset works more to separate us from "the horde" and throws us into this "put upon" position, that it is only by our own doing that any progress can possibly be made. This is illogical and irrational. There are surely thousands upon thousands of others who are willing, able, and trying to achieve the same goals. Of those many thousands, surely there are hundreds among them that could design and implement it far better than ourselves. The only differentiating factor then, is:

1) Marketing

2) Market dominance

3) Profitability

TL;DR people know what sucks in life. They know this instinctively because they live their life every single day. They know what could be done better. Thinking that "only I can show it to them" in a fancy little package leads to an overwhelming amount of arrogance. It ignores competitors. It ignores that we are a PART of the public. This kind of mindset is detrimental, if not outright counter to its own goals. The focus must instead be on improving implementation, design, and ease of use.

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