> once-in-a-generation

That's why Facebook is investing in VR. Not because they're optimistic about it, or because they want to own the space, but because it's the closest horizon that has the potential to fundamentally change interaction.

If it does, they have a foot in the door and can flood resources into it. If it doesn't, small price to pay for hedging an existential threat.

>Facebook's network effect was overwhelmed twice, once by instagram and again by whatsapp

This doesn't seem accurate, do you have evidence to back up this claim? Instagram had 30 million users and no revenue upon acquisition. Facebook had over a billion, and billions in revenues.

Growth, and especially growth in younger demographics, is probably the metric Facebook was looking at.

Right, that's why they bought instagram. But that's a far cry from the claim OP made their "network effect was overwhelmed"

I don't think one can break a scale-free network like that of Facebook by playing the same game as Facebook.

One way to counter a scale-free network is to create adjacent scale-free networks that replaces its competition one part at a time. This is what, I believe, WhatsApp (with messaging) and Instagram (with images) were on the verge of doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network#Immunizatio...

I believe this is based on the writers perception, not reality.

I can argue that my friends now use all use email, eclipsing facebook, whatsapp and instagram, better buy those stocks in SMTP. ;)

Perception, yes: https://stratechery.com/2020/social-networking-2-0/