The Old Meta: The Elegant Business Model That Worked for Two Decades

The Business Model (2004-2023)

For two decades, Meta operated an elegant business:

1. Aggregate attention through social applications
2. Monetize via advertising
3. Scale infinitely with users

The Family of Apps: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger

The Elegance: Add more users → Show more ads → Grow revenue. Almost infinitely scalable.

The Extraordinary Returns (Before the Pivot)

The Hidden Assumptions

• Software layer remains value capture point
• Infrastructure stays commoditized
• Attention alone compounds value
• No need to own physical capacity

↑ ALL BROKEN BY THE AI ERA ↑

Why It Had to End

The AI era inverted every assumption. Physical constraints became binding. Software commoditized. Attention stopped compounding without infrastructure.

This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.