You have to remember, most apps and sites all boomed around (roughly) the same time.
I think it’s a mixture of two things I saw other commenters say: investors demanding constant growth (I’m not one of those rabid anti-capitalists, but this cutthroat unforgiving attitude of boards and investors is NOT sustainable), and the other factor is these sites/apps focused on finding their niche and building an audience/userbase first and worried about monetizing second.
Since websites and apps all had the same start point just a couple of decades ago (for the oldest sites), it’s not a huge surprise they’re all running into the same dilemmas around roughly the same 5 year time span.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d wager we’ll see a few major companies rise up, build a huge audience, screw up the monetization, and drive everyone scattering to smaller sites/apps. Then in a few years one of those smaller apps has a good run, rises to the top, pulls all the users that were previously scattered, and then botches their own model eventually, scattering the users again. Rinse and repeat. Just my thoughts though
Something I read someone else here on Lemmy, but which is a good point, is the fact that there aren’t that many investors around anymore. Boomers are slowly dying out and Millenials don’t have that much money (Gen Y even less so). All of those social media apps were/are running at a loss for a long time before eventually becoming (barely) profitable, needing a steady stream of investors chasing the potential value of the app to stay afloat.
