[iainmerrick]

Facebook is irreparably doomed as a social network, but will continue to thrive as a software innovator (React, osquery, graphQL, etc).

Can that software really “thrive” if the core part of the business were to fade away, though?

Big companies can’t live on tech alone. I’m thinking of companies like Sun and Yahoo that made some cool software but ultimately didn’t have sustainable businesses.

[Fuzzwah]

Valve could maybe be seen as an example. Originally their core was the half-life series. Now it's steam.

[usefulcat]

It’s a lot more clear to me how Valve derives revenue from Steam than how FB would derive revenue from any of the tech mentioned above.

[Ekaros]

Steam is a store, for software. Extremely popular store for that. They make technology, but their main income is selling games made by others, digital collectibles derived from these and then collectibles and lootboxes for their own games.

None of that is "tech" as I would understand. No one is for example paying them for their work with Proton to make Windows games run on Linux. And I don't think there is even such market.

[Retric]

Steam provides a great deal of utility for people selling games on their store via technology. DRM for example is technology, but so is validating installation, checking for updates, etc.