[zipdog]

Thinking about the questions at the end,

Microsoft is (or was) really good at backwards compatibility (and making it easy to import other formats into their own). This is their weakness: they are focused on getting content into their own formats.

Facebook's strength is to get people to impart information into their system. Their weakness is in always trying to make it public (or at the least visible to anyone you friend)

[notahacker]

My slightly different spin:

Microsoft is very good at understanding the median user. Their sweet spot is good enough to justify paying rather than reassuringly expensive, and they impress users with feature lists and [sometimes illusory] choice over usability and extensibility. As a result their products can be pretty horrible for beginners and power users alike, and their blindness towards early adopters leaves them paying catchup in markets like smartphones

Facebook's strength is addictiveness; they understand how to get eyeballs in. Their weakness is a failure to add much value to users' lives beyond voyeurism and distraction.

[bgruber]

this bit of thread makes me feel like it's time for neal stephenson to write a sequel to in the beginning was the command line, only this time the car companies are apple, google and facebook instead of microsoft, apple, be, and linux.