It seems to me the reason you don't understand facebook monopoly because you seem to believe it was achieved through a good product which is not at all how it happened, (if the product is any good it's for facebook). They got there through a lot of tricks from the black book of shunned upon dark tricks to control supply (new registered users).
They kickstarted by seizing the universities students in ways that got them a lot of flak at the time then grew further by breaking their initial promises and more black book tricks and dark patterns.
Once they reached critical mass and user lock-in, the people themselves would recruit new users and further improve network effect.
There's also the shadow side that happened behind the scenes and can be pinpointed to around the time of Peter Thiel involvement.
So "Facebook has a monopoly through network effect" means that due to the sheer number of people registered it has an effective monopoly.
If you peruse the HN comments (or elsewhere) about facebook you will often see people that complains about facebook being a pile of crap that they can't leave because other people they want to stay to stay in touch are all there and some are only there. This is monopoly through network effect.
You should reconsider using diamonds as examples and analogy: https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bulls...
It seems to me the reason you don't understand facebook monopoly because you seem to believe it was achieved through a good product which is not at all how it happened, (if the product is any good it's for facebook). They got there through a lot of tricks from the black book of shunned upon dark tricks to control supply (new registered users). They kickstarted by seizing the universities students in ways that got them a lot of flak at the time then grew further by breaking their initial promises and more black book tricks and dark patterns. Once they reached critical mass and user lock-in, the people themselves would recruit new users and further improve network effect.
There's also the shadow side that happened behind the scenes and can be pinpointed to around the time of Peter Thiel involvement.
So "Facebook has a monopoly through network effect" means that due to the sheer number of people registered it has an effective monopoly. If you peruse the HN comments (or elsewhere) about facebook you will often see people that complains about facebook being a pile of crap that they can't leave because other people they want to stay to stay in touch are all there and some are only there. This is monopoly through network effect.