Jeremiah Owyang writes about social media, social networks, and web strategy for companies, with later posts on blockchain and tech blogging.
HN commenters cite his posts for social network usage statistics and for examples such as the Exxon Mobil Twitter impersonation, mainly as data points.
It seems several of them are now failing. Like you say, it's basically a miscalculation of unit economics over time, but being able to reduce staffing costs by 20% or more certainly gave them more runway.
Hard to say if the others have fixed their economics (eg, Instacart) or are simply better at fundraising.
Here's a list from 2015 [1] showing some of these companies that are trying to switch to W-2.
Munchery Stiffs Early Backers and Cuts Staff in a Bid for Survival [2]
Luxe Valet shuts the door on two more markets [3]
[1] http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2015/07/30/collaborative-startups-shift-from-contractor-to-employee-relationships/
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-29/munchery-stiffs-early-backers-and-cuts-staff-in-a-bid-for-survival
[3] https://www.axios.com/luxe-valet-2219230863.html
> 1. Talent is really hard to find here in Atlanta.
Finding talent will be even more difficult in NYC & SFO. Look where other people aren't looking. Jason Fried has a brilliant take on this > http://www.inc.com/magazine/201607/jason-fried/tech-poaching-talent-war.html
> 2. The network of investors in Atlanta aren't interested in our space.
ATL benefits from 2500+ daily flights -- there are potential investors all over the map. They don't care where you're based, as long as your model works.
Here's a solid list from 2013 of VC's interested in Social > http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2013/03/29/meet-the-investors-of-social-networks-and-social-media/
http://rapidsocialresponse.com - An automated response system for Twitter @mentions (not canned responses). That is, you preset a response to a specific @mention to you. I'm using Django + Python AIML at the back-end, so there's some NLP involved (although that knowledge is not needed on the for end-users).
The name is from Jeremiah Owyang's post here: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/03/05/altimeter-report-the-18-use-cases-of-social-crm-the-new-rules-of-relationship-management/
If we're going to compare myspace and facebook... it's worth pointing out that myspace, at its peak, had 110m active users. In other words, MySpace never achieved what Facebook has.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/09/social-network-stats-facebook-myspace-reunion-jan-2008/
Case in point:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/08/01/how-janet-fooled-the-twittersphere-shes-the-voice-of-exxon-mobil/
(Random twitterer pretends to be official spokesperson for Exxon)