News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Zuckerberg struggles to name a single Facebook competitor. Parent comment

Re:Zuckerberg struggles to name a single Facebook competitor by wvenable on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @06:40PM (#16806249)
The question becomes much clearer to answer when you understand that the end-users of Facebook are not its customers.

Facebook competitors are literally every other company that is trying to sell advertising.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Zuckerberg struggles to name a single Facebook competitor by nopriorarrests on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:05PM (#16806445)
Its like saying that "Vogue" is competitor to "Soldier of Fortune", since they both selling advertising.

Its much more nuanced. Advertising offered by facebook is VERY different from advertising slots during Superbowl.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Zuckerberg struggles to name a single Facebook competitor by abiox on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @09:02PM (#16807184)
i actually feel that fb and the superbowl are much closer than vogue and soldier of fortune... (but i think your point is reasonable.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Zuckerberg struggles to name a single Facebook competitor by eesmith on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @02:01AM (#16808433)
A monopoly determination is made on market power, not the existence of other people in the field.

If I start an advertising company which charges advertisers a blanket $1 per year, I don't affect FB's market power, because I don't have the same reach or same targeting capabilities.

Standard Oil's competitors might have been every other energy-provider company, but that doesn't detract from Standard Oil's market power in subsets of the energy-provider field.

Facebook's competitors might be every other advertiser, but that doesn't mean Facebook is immune from charges of abusing its market power.

[ Parent | on HN ]