

The Ponzi Facebook economy - bosshog
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2007/09/research-note-pride-goeth-before-fall.cfm

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colortone
Thought experiment:

I'm going to try and synthesize a strategy for facebook from Marc Andreessen's
post on platforms from yesterday, the follow-on discussion on AVC, and this
post from Bubblegen...

1\. Getting "open": for the near/medium term, facebook needs to become a
"level 3" platform, where complementary services are able to _themselves_
capture value. (I suspect that the facebook people see this already, but, then
again, they might be "evil" ;-)

2\. In the long run, the Net itself is the "platform"; I don't know what the
service they might provide in that world (5+ years?), but I suspect it's
_nothing_ like the facebook of today. Maybe something that manages the
portability of your personal info/history?

Any thoughts?

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rwebb
not a good article. the "ponzi" theory is good, simply because the advertisers
pumping $ into the network haven't gotten proven returns (lots of the FB
networks that have venture backing are pumping in their own ad inventory and
subsidizing their own networks - not sustainable). the whole "evil" thing is
laughable though. wtf?

~~~
colortone
One of Umair's theories is that traditional industrial-era representations of
the firm (i.e. crass commercial corporation) are headed towards irrelevance.

In their stead, firms which leverage the wealth of information/value _outside_
the firm (i.e. GOOG) will create huge value.

GOOG leverages information outside the firm...and that info _stays_ outside
the firm (at least as far as search is concerned). This is generally referred
to as "edge competency."

 _IN CONTRAST_ , facebook sucks information in from the outside world, and
keeps it inside the firm.

Ergo, it is "evil."

He is right, in that this is not a sustainable strategy.

------
axod
Anyone else find the "COOL multimedia buzzcloud" on that page deeply _un_
cool?

