
Ask HN: Why did no competitors beat Facebook to win social networking? - hoodoof
Surely the opportunity became obvious, why did a host of me-toos not spring up and win?<p>It seems to me that in 2017 if you came up with some awesome new idea then a thousand clones would be trying to wrestle the opportunity off you.
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19eightyfour
Battle is not over. FB lost in China. Mark will move into policy politics
later and when he makes the break FB will decline more.

Also predict that changing market for surveillance and censorship respecting
developing economies will result in newcomers getting foothold.

Expect FB share price to peak in 2028 decline thereafter.

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lun4r
Ehm. They did. Social networks were springing up everywhere. Facebook wasn't
the first social network to become populair. Orkut, Friendster, Myspace all
became popular earlier. In my country we had a local FB clone that became the
most visited website locally, then lost it to FB. Also there is VK.com, a
Russian Facebook clone. Attacking a strong going network effect is very, very
difficult. This is a winner-takes-all market and once a clear leader emerges,
good luck beating it.

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himlion
"In my country we had a local FB clone that became the most visited website
locally, then lost it to FB."

Hyves in the Netherlands?

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lun4r
Yes, that one.

