Yeah but their business model was different: they started with a compelling garden and then users convinced themselves they needed to be in it.
Basically the telcos came from another direction: "hey our users are not paying us for that stuff they are doing with some other company on our network! Lets fix it by copying that stuff in some half-assed way and then charge for it."
That's a bad idea because now you are charging for stuff that users are already getting elsewhere that they don't really need you for. So, you basically end up with an empty room problem. Worse, due to the network effect some of these things don't make sense if they are operator specific. E.g. An O2 only social network or video call service is just not a thing. So, now we are talking standardization and design by committee. This is exactly why most of the stuff in 3G flopped (other than IP networking): they were years late to market with stuff that barely worked with basically noone caring about it.
Basically the telcos came from another direction: "hey our users are not paying us for that stuff they are doing with some other company on our network! Lets fix it by copying that stuff in some half-assed way and then charge for it."
That's a bad idea because now you are charging for stuff that users are already getting elsewhere that they don't really need you for. So, you basically end up with an empty room problem. Worse, due to the network effect some of these things don't make sense if they are operator specific. E.g. An O2 only social network or video call service is just not a thing. So, now we are talking standardization and design by committee. This is exactly why most of the stuff in 3G flopped (other than IP networking): they were years late to market with stuff that barely worked with basically noone caring about it.