[OhSoHumble]

All of that is intentional. There isn't enough money to be made connecting people. Revenue streams are driven by ads attached to media interaction. Connecting people is low engagement. We, as consumers, have rewarded this revenue model by proving that it works. If you don't want to contribute to it then don't use these large platforms.

[scoofy]

I suspect there is plenty of money there, just not enough to support a multinational conglomerate.

The natural monopoly of networks is what brought us all to social networks, and I suspect it is why they will fail. Niche networks run by a small team (which is what social networks were when we were the early adopters) seem like they can trivially sustain themselves.

The explosion of podcasting is exactly this, but for nontechnical people.