IcaroRibeiro said:
Bold: But they aren't solving any problem, they created a market that didn't needed to exist at all. Business aren't supposed to be strictly problem-solvers, you can create value without solving anything and this isn't restricted to Tech. The value social networks are creating is the ability to interact with people you otherwise couldn't and to follow a bit the lifes of people in your own social circle Bold 2: Nope, I couldn't. I've found them online precisely because I wasn't able to make friends on school or neighborhood. It's curious because only after I established online friendship I could mature and find people to be friends with on my "real life", now I have friends in both, but it only started because of social networks And even if I was able to form bonds without social networks doesn't change the fact many of people I became friends with would never met me without social networks, in this sense I'm glad social networks exists And mind you, social networks actually DOES solve a problem, which is the problem to fast keep in touch with people. Before social networks you need to keep a list of friends and make regular calls or write letters to ask how those people are doing and expect them to follow suit. After social networks you can easily see this by yourself, as long the person is updating their profile and you both are willing to keep contact. Talking about Facebook, what they bring to the table was the feed. Before the feeds the social networks were based on research engines and browsing friends profiles or communities (if the social network had communities). The feed greatly reduced it, because the feeds are like discover. They also developed state of art recommendation algorithms so your feed would be personalized to make to stay in the network as much as possible, which I don't think it's exactly a good thing but it is what is is, people like it Besides feeds are useful, I got tons of great publications, articles, news and opportunities on my Linkedin thanks to its feed, which is basically a copy of Facebook feed |
Yeah, I see your point, and maybe I could have been clearer. To sum it up, in innovation there are usually 2 types of solutions: 1. the ones you cannot do without once stablished and 2. the ones that are nice to have. FB seems to claim to be the of first type, in which usually the most innovative solutions are, but it falls mainly in the second category, that being the reason Reggie is right.
And back to your comment, you are correct, social medias do help you get in touch with diverse people. But that does not make FB an innovative company in itself. Talking about myself, for example, I don't like, or borderline hate, Facebook. For me, I could not care less if it did not exist. So it is not absolutely necessary for today's standards, since one like myself can easily do without it. Can we state the same about, say, smartphones? That's the original discussion, and I think it's rude to be called short sited if all I ever said is corroborated by many of these facts.
Edit: forgot to address this: "they created a market that didn't needed to exist at all" is something you raised yourself that applies perfectly to FB and most of their products. Your own argument proves my point.
My 1000th post: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9368779