Brendan Gahan argues Facebook's shift to paid advertising after going public in 2012 was a massive rug pull, killing the organic reach that once let brands build free communities. The platform promised direct brand-to-consumer connection, then made it impossible without paying for ads.
What's your take on the shortcomings of Web2 or the unlived promises of Web2? And the promise at the time was community and removing the intermediary, right? Brands, come build your communities on Facebook, talk to them directly. Here are these free tools, Facebook groups, Facebook fan pages. Bring your entire community here, talk to them freely. And then what happened? If we're using Web3 language, Facebook had the biggest rug pull that we've ever seen when they started to kill organic reach. When did organic reach start to decline? Around 2012, when Facebook went public and needed to make money. We saw this shift of build community, build community, build community. But then the business model of advertising can sometimes be at odds with a community building strategy. And so as Web2 scaled and its business model cemented itself around advertising and really 100% advertising, I think it killed the ability for Facebook to allow brands to build communities. That is.
