this digital landscape shifted once the success of Google’s ad program revealed that you could make a lot of money on user-generated creative output, which led to the rise of social-media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Initially, these companies emphasized their simple, elegant-looking interfaces and their sales pitches about online expression and connection, but really they were hijacking the Web 2.0 revolution by concentrating much of its new energetic user activity onto their own pro

Source: The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class | The New Yorker