Fakebook is going down the tubes...boo hoo hoo

[reACTIONary]

38. There are plenty of kids (and oldsters) who...

... create LOTS of great software with no expectation of being paid for it. It's called free and open source software.

An example is Wikipedia, which is built on on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform. Anyone who wants to start a Wikipedia type service can just copy the software and get started. Wikipedia is also one of the most successful and visited sites on the internet.

Several open source social networking platforms exist. For instance, TFG's Truthy (anti)Social is built on Mastodon. So software development is NOT a barrier to entry.

But even Google could not compete with Facebook and their Google+ social media service was shut down.

So why aren't there any serious large scale competitors of Facebook? My guess is because of an economic phenomenon called "network externalities". This is in effect when the value of a product or service is proportional to the number of people using it. Once a certain level of usage is obtained, the cost of entry for a competitor is insanely high... the have to start out from the git-go with a substantial, comparable number of users. It can't be done.

This is also why trust busting Facebook doesn't make any sense. If you bust it up, you destroy its value.

This does not mean that all competition is impossible, however. After all DU is a successful social networking service. It means that competition is restricted to niche markets, such as DU serves.

So I don't think Facebook is engaging in any nefarious anticompetitive strategies. Simply because they don't have to.