[echelon]

I don't think they have any moat at all. People always claim that Facebook's hold over the population is absolute and that the gravity and sheer volume of users will make it impossible for upstarts to make a dent.

And yet every new highschool cohort has a new social media app.

These are simple CRUD apps and anyone can make them. The tech is only getting more accessible. Look at the ages of people launching these things. Young people get young people.

Facebook is for grandmas yelling at liberals. TikTok is exiting and fresh. In four years, it'll be something new.

Of the many failed attempts to make social media apps, the ones I'm most aware of seem to have all failed due to mismanagement (vine, voat, yikyak).

Look at the proliferation of dating apps. Not even Tinder is the end-all be-all. There are new entries in that field all the time, and it's hyper adjacent to social media.

I don't think either industry is a good place to build a moat. You have to keep buying the upstarts to win.