[themagician]

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc… they are all just iterations of the same basic things: messaging, file (photo) sharing, identify, news. The writing is on the wall from inception. The value is in the community, but community is amorphous and not really ownable or defendable.

The only real difference I've noticed in the last, lets say 15 years, is that people have grown up with things now and so they seem "easier" and more "accessible." To some extent that's true, but it's mostly the people that have changed not the products or services themselves.

I don't really believe that any "internet company" is sustainable. The value they add exists at a point in time and decays. Get in and get out. The basic functions are too easy to copy and there's no guarantee you keep your community unless you do so by force.

At some point you either become a media company that caters to specific demographics (the lookalike audience you acquired), or you disappear.

[alphapapa]

I think your comment is quite insightful. Just think about how many times instant messaging has shifted from one most-popular platform to another. IRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN, Skype...SMS?...Facebook?...WhatsApp? It's just a constant shift from one service to the next. Obviously this cycling will continue forever. Therefore it would seem unwise to invest in any one platform too heavily, if at all--as a user or an investor.

[themagician]

It makes sense to invest, I think. Notice, I'm not saying that these things aren't valuable—they are. It's just that their value is time limited. They add the bulk of their value between date X and Y, and it just decays after that. And after their value has been delivered, if they disappeared entirely the world really wouldn't be any different.

If tomorrow their was no more Facebook I don't feel like it would be a big deal for more than a week or so. After a few hours everyone would have a new solution for photos, messaging, etc.. After a month no one would care anymore.

As an investor I think the thing is to get in early, help built that valuable moment in time in peoples' lives, and then just get out.

[cft]

Skype - was released in 2003, and is very popular among teens 12 years later. These users were 2 years old when Skype was released.

[alphapapa]

Kind of an anecdote, but still interesting, thanks. The question is, then, for how long will Skype be as popular as it currently is? And, will these teens keep using it as they age? If so, will Skype's demographic tend to follow them?

Of course there are a million variables. I mean, AIM is still around, right? But it's no longer the "default" IM system, while a few years ago, it seemed to be (to me, anyway).

[nemothekid]

Is this a trait of "internet companies" or of advertising-backed media companies in the post internet world? They all seem to sell product and its not like the New York Times has anything inherently more "defensible" than Twitter does (Brand & Scale).

And I'm not sure Facebook or Google (with its current revenue makeup) is anything other than a media company, nor have they ever not been.

[themagician]

I don't think there's anything wrong with media companies. They are sustainable over a longer period of time, they just aren't particularly interesting.

I can easily see Facebook going the way of AOL. In a few years a new generation will grow up with something new that seems easier and more intuitive to them, and Facebook becomes a legacy platform. Maybe they buy a few small media companies that keep the newsfeed interesting.

I just can't see Facebook, Twitter or anything else being "the thing" on a sustainable basis. There's no precedent for that, and it really doesn't make sense to me intuitively.

[rsync]

You're forgetting craigslist.

Year after year, same old "ugly" site, same old boring use case.

I wish I'd thought of it.

[themagician]

I forgot a few things. CL is definitely one of them.

Another thing I left out, which I feel is novel, is the wiki. IMO the wiki is one of the few "new" things. When you really think about the wiki it's pretty different form a message board or co-editing a website. It's something else.