The band Muse has surrendered its Instagram and X handles to Meta after the release of its new AI agent, Muse.
The English rock band Muse has been renamed on Instagram and X from “Muse” to “museband.”
Despite the band Muse having had its Instagram account since 2012 and its X account since 2008, it has seemingly surrendered the handle to Mark Zuckerberg’s newest AI agent.
That’s really no different than saying, “You can’t expect billionaires to stop being evil when it would significantly impact their income.”
Not really, I don't consider bands to be as parasitic as billionaires, because they at least do something to earn their money. If you're a billionaire, you can just hire someone to take your place, leave, and profit forever, but if all the members of a band step aside to let a whole different crew of people take over, that band probably isn't gonna have anywhere near the same following or quality as it did before.
Still, I do kind of understand the point.
The network effect works both ways. See Myspace and Friendster.
MySpace is actually a great example of this, because Facebook found a way to remove switching costs for users moving to Facebook, which is why Facebook succeeded.
Facebook made a bot that would automatically scrape all your MySpace activity from friends, and forward it to Facebook.
Moving to Facebook meant not having to leave anyone behind, because you could still see everything from them and respond to them, but you got a better experience, so that's what many people did. Eventually, the people they were getting forwarded messages from on MySpace just switched to Facebook too.
Leaving Facebook now does not carry these same benefits. There is no other app that allows you to do this without Facebook cracking down on it and severing your access. Hence, switching costs are very high.
Facebook opened the door to themselves, and then locked the door shut, leaving you only the fire escape as an exit.