| Hey everyone, it's Kurt. When HQ Trivia co-founder Rus Yusupov announced his startup was shutting down late last week, I couldn't help but think about the company he'd built before HQ—the video-sharing app Vine. Not only did it feel like the two companies met a similar fate—both apps announced they would shut down, then tried to find an emergency buyer to rescue the brand—but it also felt like both had fizzled much too quickly. The flameout raises an obvious question: What could have been? It seems like we've been asking a version of that query for most of the past five years when it comes to social media startups. I started covering "social media" in 2013, and I used to spend time writing about a lot of different companies. Remember Secret? Or Path? Or Whisper or Meerkat or Tumblr? There was a time when it looked like a startup building another Facebook Inc. wasn't just possible, it was likely. I no longer feel that way, and I'm torn on why that is. On one hand, it's hard to imagine any startup has a unique enough product and deep enough pockets to survive in Facebook's worlds of social media and messaging. Facebook is a notorious buyer or copier of anything interesting that comes along, and while the company would argue it doesn't have a literal monopoly on communication products, it's hard to imagine an upstart thriving on the company's turf. On the other hand, maybe a new Facebook was never an imminent possibility—its early network effects were just too strong—and we were just paying attention because the company's early successes were so dramatic. I'd bet that the 2020 versions of Meerkat, Whisper and Path are out there somewhere. They're just not getting the kind of media attention their predecessors received because some journalists like me have stopped looking. Journalists aren't alone in this assessment. Venture capitalists have long steered clear of upstarts that might compete too directly with Big Tech, and politicians have argued the only way new startups will blossom is if companies like Facebook are broken up. From my vantage point, I still think there's a path for new social media companies to make it big, but I don't think they can do it alone. Instagram thrived under Facebook's protection. Now, TikTok is doing the same under its parent company, ByteDance Inc. If there is a next Facebook to be found, it might be hatched in a dorm room, but it'll probably need the help of a bigger company, like Facebook, to actually succeed. And even then, a wealthy backer is no guarantee. Vine was acquired by Twitter and languished. After it shut down in 2016, Yusupov tweeted angrily: "Don't sell your company!" I'm not sure it would have mattered. —Kurt Wagner | 
Social media giant Facebook has made a move into dedicated video, pitting it against YouTube and TV networks. Users will soon se...
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