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"Won't someone please think of the shareholders"... It seems like the obvious idea, it is exactly their strengths and their user base is old enough for those features to be of value.

The thing is that would mean making Facebook less valuable, causing the current shareholders to lose money. It's going to be hard to get someone to accept a business plan that will cost them money, even if the alternative is worse long term. Perhaps because you're betting that you can of load our shares before the whole thing goes belly up (whenever that may be).

I think your idea makes a lot of sense, it would be cheaper to run, there's less fancy features to develop, might be cheaper to run andless use for moderation. The thing I don't understand well enough is the ads: Can you charge more, because your users are older and buy different things, or do teens and younger people have more disposable income?



Zuck owns a majority of the shares and there may not be anyone to please besides him. Also, cutting 50% of the expensive tech jobs sounds profitable to me.

The issue is that Zuck is no Craig Newmark. Craig is a nice guy, a philanthropist, and generally a good figure to look up to become one day.

> The thing I don't understand well enough is the ads: Can you charge more, because your users are older and buy different things, or do teens and younger people have more disposable income?

The ads run at auction, FB doesn't explicitly charge a set price for the inventory. Facebook for years has been running with an inflationary inventory (first fb, then fb newsfeed+fb, then fb+nf+insta, then fb+nf+insta+ insta stories, etc). Meaning that they have more ad slots, and more impressions, and can create a lower (at least in short term) the price per ad, while increasing overall revenue. Remember, Facebook is really good at getting an ad to the right person, so Facebook ad inventory has been valuable. If Facebook stops adding new features, then the inventory becomes static, and the price per ad will rise (again, valuable), and price out their ad customers.

(I think the idea is terrible but more feasible than people give credit for).


> The thing is that would mean making Facebook less valuable

Would it? Is the stock market completely irrational and incapable of seeing the long-term value here? Or does the market know something we don't?




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