I believe so, yes. Why else would they be so successful? Any other attempt to replace Facebook (or even copy it) as a social network had failed or remained insignificant. Why? I think, because they cannot agree on how to finance their services on large scales. Facebook has vast monetary resources and they know to manage them.
I imagine the story of Facebook as this. In the beginning Facebook was just another campus project gone wild. But then there was an idea to grow beyond the campus, somehow. The question arose: where do we get the money? Answer: Well, we do online ads. Later: How do we grow world-wide? We need even more money, we need to bring in and convince investors, that we have a vast network of ads and that's basically a dead-sure cash cow. So, Facebook mutated from an innocent campus project into a cash cow, just because that's the way it goes. But, it doesn't mean that it's right. So, the question is: What does Facebook do to keep ahead of its competition (Apple, Google, ... as Zuck said)? It's a trade secret, right?
> Why else would they be so successful? Any other attempt to replace Facebook (or even copy it) as a social network had failed or remained insignificant.
Would this not be adequately explained by the first movers advantage (or maybe not the very first, but very early), coupled with the network effect?
> What does Facebook do to keep ahead of its competition
It's just the network effect. Google Plus was ahead of Facebook in multiple ways, but it just couldn't take off (sure the fact that Google set unrealistic goals and followed an awful strategy didn't help)
I imagine the story of Facebook as this. In the beginning Facebook was just another campus project gone wild. But then there was an idea to grow beyond the campus, somehow. The question arose: where do we get the money? Answer: Well, we do online ads. Later: How do we grow world-wide? We need even more money, we need to bring in and convince investors, that we have a vast network of ads and that's basically a dead-sure cash cow. So, Facebook mutated from an innocent campus project into a cash cow, just because that's the way it goes. But, it doesn't mean that it's right. So, the question is: What does Facebook do to keep ahead of its competition (Apple, Google, ... as Zuck said)? It's a trade secret, right?