Think about it, he morphed the idea for mass consumption, but it wasn't really his idea. I often have told people I'm a fire fighter. I re-engineer, re-think, improve someone else's ideas, designs, concepts. I see certain flaws, that the original designer(s) didn't see, but I do not create machines. It's not my forte. Here's where Zuck the Puck and I deviate. He truly believes this was "his" idea and so his vision is clouded by his own view of "his" creation failing. He didn't really care about connecting with people. He cared about money. The great idea he stole was about connection. His idea was about how to monetize someone else's idea. He's not a firefighter either. He doesn't know how to fix it.
If there's any doubt, one only has to look at how he's got his entire drove of employees scrambling around trying to figure out how to play catch up with more innovative companies. Instagram is basically TikTok. Threads is basically Twitter crossed with Musk's version only tamer. And now Facebook is just endless ads. It forced my account into a creator mode. Yes, seriously, because it was tracking my phone illegally accessing my Google and YouTube usage and discovering I run a branded VLOG, which looks like money to them. That's all. When I followed up with other people, they didn't make all of them switch. Just those of us that they scanned our phones and found creator accounts with other platforms.
Side note. Yes, I'm waiting for a class action lawsuit to blossom since there's got to be proof of this somewhere this is how they decided how to force certain accounts into creator mode while leaving others alone.
But here's the thing. It doesn't show me any of my friends anymore. It shows me just the last 3-4 people I added and endless, I mean ENDLESS, crap I can see on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. It's just a cross between the memes and videos whereas the others show me almost exclusively videos.
Now if you are an old enough user, you remember when it was mostly college educated, then it became a hodge podge of everyone, then a cesspool of trolls and bullshit. It's still a cesspool of trolls and bullshit, and Zuck the Puck can't figure out why. He's not a designer. It's not his vision. He's not a fire fighter who looks and sees how it can be fixed. He sees money. That's what he saw when he stole the idea and that's all he sees now.
Obviously a designer would say get back to the roots, the origin. When they create something they want it to stay true to its ideals. A lawnmower mows lawns. A firefighter like me added the bag on the back and a motor and speed control and height control. A great idea with great updating ideas. Zuck the Puck is doing what money grubbing folks do. They jump idea to idea, just looking for the next big idea or stealing another great idea or copying the idea that took their business. In the case of the lawnmower example, Zuck saw a guy build an entire lawnmowing business and be successful at it, so he now wants his lawnmower business to become a lawnmowing business. In which case, who's making the lawnmowers?
Well, no one. No one has filled that void. LinkedIn is looked at as an expensive networking site for finding jobs. You really have to pay to play and it's almost exclusively rich men bragging about how much money they made or the latest innovation they usually "stole" via intellectual contracts from those smarter design types and the firefighters who had to create an improvement or a bandaid to improve the innovations that have gotten old. Twitter was never as much about friends as discussions with random people we didn't know, now it's just random, really racist people that no one wants to talk to in unpolite conversation, let alone polite conversation. TikTok is still TikTok. But Facebook? It's the epitome of the problem with rich men chasing money, stealing other people's ideas and then dancing around like it's their own.
Could Harvard Connect have grown into Friends Connect or something if Zuck the Puck hadn't stolen it? We will never know. What we do know is he knew it was a great idea and he marketed it better than anyone else did. MySpace basically fell apart because of it.
But he's just a money grubbing puck. He's not the idea man. He stole it. He's not the firefighter that might have improved it over the early years. He's just the money guy. Money guys see something can make money and then they basically become thieves and we as a society reward them heavily for their thefts. Facebook is a long line of empire building that could've been that trusted lawnmower brand you keep coming back to, but Zuck the Puck like all salesmen didn't see the social media as a friends' asset to keep people connected. That was those other 3 Harvard students. He saw money, got money and now only sees the money, up or down, left or right, he's only chasing the money.
Facebook was a great, still is a great, concept. In a world of disconnection, it could've been the connection that brought people together. But Zuck the Puck saw dollar signs from the jump and it is the daily dollar signs that are driving it now. From Moscow trolls to unlimited ads of people you don't know, don't give a shit about and stealing our information via illegal access of our apps on our phones. So far from the roots those three Harvard students thought it would be that it's no longer doing the work it was originally designed to do. It's no longer a lawnmower. It's not even a lawnmowing business. It's a heap of garbage that belongs in the bin. Time to start from scratch.
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