Why some of these social networks are so hard to beat

john | Feb. 20, 2021, 5:13 a.m.

The way the internet has evolved, at least how people search for information, is search engines.  Most phones, which is what the majority of the world uses to browse the internet, like computers did back in the day, come preinstalled with browsers and search engines.  Some even come installed with social networks.

Now this is in part by design and in part by the fact that it was the simplest solution at the time because it was the best.  Take for example when google came out.  All the other search engines, looked spamish, and generally their results where not too great.

Along comes google, giving you a new authority engine.  Then out of no where there is a nice simple way to search for things on the internet instead of having to type in a domain and hope some one developed it.

This was awesome, and still probably is.  But as more and more people started using the internet, also came the copious amount of volume that humans produce also needing to be indexed and ranked via authority.

This is generally helpful as most people trust the top search results now a days of most search engines.  So how does this lead for social networks dominance.  Well, let's assume that some one doesn't have FaceBook or similar.  They get brand new access to a phone or something, and do a simple search. 

Now FaceBook, Amazon, Harvard, all have authority.  They are "trusted" sourced of content on the internet.  There are of course others, but I'm trying to keep things simple. The only difference is Harvard does not have the entire world population able to post on it.

So by default if someone, qualified, or not, was to write something on FaceBook about a subject.  Just by the amount of clout that FB has due to the number of other sites linking to it in the world, and the speed at which the site loads, on top of the fact that the parts that are exposed are also designed to be optimized for a search engine means that any new potential visitor is most likely going to land on that site.

So by therefor all new internet users end up visiting some of the major authorities on the internet that basically made it easier for humans to be able to post and publish things, ie becoming an indeterminate. 

And since humans are far more creative in collective than any one human can be, by being the source of where people can publish things for sale, or thoughts, it by algorithmic process leads to the situation we are in.  Of course there are ways to get around this, but that's not for today.

Follow me on BlueSky @nader.mx