The show needed to pivot. I think they painted themselves into a corner with the plot. If someone did create a new better compression technology, they would just patent it and live off the royalties. Or just sell a binary library to every software vendor on the planet.

Personally I preferred the show Beta's for it's prospect of a social network trying to get established. There would be a lot of mileage in that.

Having said which Silicon Valley Season 1 Episode 8 was pure genius in terms of comic hilarity.