Episode 146 — Facebook’s Real Mistake

Ben and James discuss Facebook’s current crisis, and why almost everyone misunderstands what the company did wrong: the problem isn’t advertising, it was Facebook’s desire to be a platform.

Presented by WordPress.com: Get 15% off on a new site by visiting WordPress.com/Exponent (wordpress.com/exponent).

Links

• James Allworth: What the F*** Was Facebook Thinking — Medium (medium.com/@jamesallworth/what-the-f-was-faceb…)

• Ben Thompson: The Facebook Brand — Stratechery (stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-brand)

• Ben Thompson: Tim Cook’s Unfair and Unrealistic Privacy Speech — Stratechery (stratechery.com/2015/tim-cooks-unfair-and-unre…)

• Mark Zuckerberg’s Reckoning: ‘This Is a Major Trust Issue’ — The New York Times (nytimes.com/2018/03/21/technology/mark-zuckerb…)

• Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Good News — Stratechery (stratechery.com/2013/mobile-makes-facebook-jus…)

• Nicholas Thompson: Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Wired About Facebook’s Privacy Problem — Wired (wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-talks-to-wired…)

• Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery (stratechery.com/2016/the-voters-decide)

Hosts

• Ben Thompson, @benthompson (twitter.com/benthompson), Stratechery (stratechery.com)

• James Allworth, @jamesallworth (twitter.com/jamesallworth), Harvard Business Review (hbr.org/search?term=James+Allworth&sort=po…)

Podcast Information

• Feed (exponent.fm/feed)

• iTunes (itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/exponent/id826420969)

• SoundCloud (soundcloud.com/exponentfm)

• Twitter (twitter.com/exponentfm)

• Feedback (stratechery.com/exponent-feedback)

• Presented by WordPress.com (wordpress.com/exponent)