Why do news aggregator apps keep failing? - Baekdal

To take the most famous example, the root of Facebook's churn issues began when their graph burgeoned to encompass everyone in one's life. As noted above, just because we are friends with someone doesn't mean we want to see everything they post about in our News Feed. In the other direction, having many more people from all spheres of our lives fol... See more

This doesn't stop social apps from trying to fix the problem. Reduced traffic to the feed is existential for many social apps. Instead of fixing the root problem of the graph design, however, most apps opt instead to patch the problem. The most popular method is to switch to an algorithmic, rather than chronological, feed. The algorithm is tasked w... See more

Aggregators have all three of the following characteristics; the absence of any one of them can result in a very successful business (in the case of Apple, arguably the most successful business in history), but it means said company is not an aggregator.

But becoming an Aggregator can also lead you astray from your core focus and vision, and can upset the businesses that came to your platform to launch in the first place, precisely because they did not want to get aggregated down the road. The most successful businesses created on the BiaB platform could leave.

Medium is trying to become the aggregator of articles.  Why are they trying to do that? Because aggregators can become massive: tens of billions of dollars in value, sometimes hundreds of billions or even trillions. About 70% of the value created by tech comes from companies like aggregators, fueled by network effects. 

An aggregator like Facebook or Airbnb brings all the relevant goods, services, or information that a consumer might seek into one place, and it gathers all the consumers there, too. Netflix is a one-stop shop for film and television. YouTube is a one-stop shop for user-generated video. Uber is a one-stop shop for car rides. These aggregators amass ... See more