[thephyber]

I think some users certainly act as you describe, but I suspect the majority of users will follow the early adopters after they identify and popularize a better mousetrap.

The history of social media platforms suggests to me that users are fickle and have no strong connection to any platform. Friendster, MySpace, Facebook each had their moment and then most users either left the platform or spend more time on other platforms.

We are in an interesting phase where lots of different new platforms are experimenting with differentiation strategies. There is a whole ecosystem of “political right” social media (Truth Social, Gab, Parlor, Rumbl, etc). The federated social media platforms are selling the “you won’t lose access to everything due to moderation/banning” niche. I’m sure there are Web3 (the blockchain one) social media platforms, but I can’t be bothered to look into their details.

[autokad]

I always felt like the big switch from myspace to facebook came because facebook had a lot of games and apps that you could play and use on the platform. ironically, because facebook took such a big cut, all those apps have gone away.

for facebook to be displaced, an app has to offer something else facebook isn't offering, and most new apps offer less - going for the simpler approach. I think that's a loosing strategy myself. I remember how long I used msn messenger just because it had the email tied into it at the time. You need to offer more, not less.