As these articles have rolled out, I'm increasingly wondering whether Facebook could have grown to its current size just by being the communication and identity layer of the web. No news in your timeline, no TV shows, nothing. Could it have been a freemium model instead of ad-based?
There are so many valuable companies (Slack, craigslist, Angie's List, Yelp) that Facebook has tried to replace and failed, but I wish it had gone in those directions instead of feeding us to advertisers.
