Yeah. I'd defy anybody to think critically about Facebook for five minutes and not come to that conclusion.

> This has been the MO of mass entertainment since the gladiators fought the lions.

Absolutely.

Lots of early proto-social media companies were already doing things like that back in the 90s. Like when AOL was king and "You've Got Mail!" was a household catchphrase and featured in their marketing. They knew that people were thrilled to get stuff from other people.

Probably the most obvious and recent antecedent to gamefied social media would be, uh, well, games. There were a few decades of ideas to cherry pick from the game world.