It's the cycle of people who want to "do things better".
Step 1: Find a type of website experience that sucks for users. Example: Blogging, image sharing.
Step 2: It's so simple! Just do the same, improve on the UX, don't plaster ads, have a clean site and give it a cool name. Example: Medium, Imgur.
Step 3: As people flock to your site because it's cleaner than the alternatives, have the lightbulb moment: "Oh wow, I could monetize all these users!". So you plaster the site with ads, marketing gimmicks and what not and you don't suffer for it. It's not that it works. It's just that you have a userbase that trusts you and is already used to you. They don't know anyone else.
What are your users gonna do, build their own site that doesn't suck?
It really is a depressing, wasteful cycle.
Step 1: Find a type of website experience that sucks for users. Example: Blogging, image sharing.
Step 2: It's so simple! Just do the same, improve on the UX, don't plaster ads, have a clean site and give it a cool name. Example: Medium, Imgur.
Step 3: As people flock to your site because it's cleaner than the alternatives, have the lightbulb moment: "Oh wow, I could monetize all these users!". So you plaster the site with ads, marketing gimmicks and what not and you don't suffer for it. It's not that it works. It's just that you have a userbase that trusts you and is already used to you. They don't know anyone else.
What are your users gonna do, build their own site that doesn't suck?
It really is a depressing, wasteful cycle.