Comment by notahacker
15 hours ago
Think that's fair. He's generally been excellent at pissing off users in ways which grow his reach without them leaving and he's been willing to spend big on nascent competitors and actually managed not to destroy their platforms, but I do get the feeling (i) real activity on Facebook actually is tailing off now and (ii) he left a money on the table going for low value ads based on click patterns rather than building events and marketplace into genuinely useful services. But that wasn't his thing and the thing he did have made him enough money to give him bragging rights over an entire room of other billionaires.
Managed not to lose it all on his stillborn metaverse or trying to outcompete AI startups too.
i) I'm sure everyone agrees with this, except maybe a few fans. The best thing he did was slowly wean the whole company off FACEBOOK, even if it's with the Meta smokescreen. Instagram is their core now.
ii) I would disagree on this. Meta is king of low value ads. Google is great at targeted ads, but sometimes you want something to reach as many eyes as possible, as cheaply as possible.
They've barely avoided many of the dark patterns like chumboxes and forced repetition of screens, just because they have enough people scrolling through it. Of course, there's other dark patterns here, but I give them a B+ for low value ads.
The marketplaces and events still provide massive value to the world, for free, as long as they lasted. In the end, it's nearly a trillion dollar company, which is a remarkable thing to build on low value ads.