The Atlantic

September 10, 2012

Why the Social Media Revolution Is About to Get a Little Less Awesome

Facebook, as a symbol of the attention economy, had already changed dramatically. Before the IPO, the company’s value was a debate. After the IPO, its value was a stock price. One side had said all along that no company had ever achieved Facebook’s scale, reach, and mastery of an audience’s time and attention without being worth $100 billion. Another side had said that no company such an undeveloped business model could possibly be worth even half that price. We don’t know who’s right in the long term, but in the short term the pessimists are winning[…]
Some of the smartest and most creative entrepreneurs and developers of our generation are dedicated to making awesome stuff for you, and, bankrolled by deep-pocketed venture capitalists, their determining business metric was not “How will you make money from credit cards and marketing departments?” but rather: How many millions of people are you delighting with your exceptionally cheap product? It is hard to imagine an industry built on a more satisfying premise for customers.

Read more. [Image: Telegraph]

12:39pm | URL: https://theatlantic.tumblr.com/post/31275216960/why-the-social-media-revolution-is-about-to-get-a

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