Are Google and Facebook Different?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

James Carville: I found this week very intellectually stimulating from a sort of like strategic perspective. It made me think about a few things that have been on the edge of my head for a while and never fully fleshed out. And one of the big ones is, in what respect are Google and Facebook different? He says they're both able to leverage their initial good user experience to get lots of users that gave them leverage or suppliers such that they can improve the product and gain more users. The idea is, you know, Google start with just links, 10 blue links; now Google rarely gives you a result that's just 10 blue links. On the other side, Google controls demand

Ben and James discuss Facebook’s current crisis, and why almost everyone misunderstands what the company did wrong: the problem isn’t advertising, it was Facebook’s desire to be a platform.

Presented by WordPress.com: Get 15% off on a new site by visiting WordPress.com/Exponent.

Links

James Allworth: What the F*** Was Facebook Thinking — Medium
Ben Thompson: The Facebook Brand — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Tim Cook’s Unfair and Unrealistic Privacy Speech — Stratechery
Mark Zuckerberg’s Reckoning: ‘This Is a Major Trust Issue’ — The New York Times
Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Good News — Stratechery
Nicholas Thompson: Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Wired About Facebook’s Privacy Problem — Wired
Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery