I’d really love to see some actual creativity out of the biggest names in the industry, instead of this endless regurgitation of whatever idea got the tiniest bit of traction most recently.
Creativity is for startups. If you run the 8th or so most valuable company on the planet, your competitive advantage is mostly your scale. You should mostly be using that to maximize return on proven stuff (either by buying or copying proven things), not pissing away billions of dollars on stuff that a startup can iterate on for a tiny fraction of that price.
Doing something interesting comes with risk. That billion dollars is likely cash from investors who want a return. They won't be happy if the interesting thing you want to do isn't going to return a profit, hence they stick with what they know best and is least risky.
If you have a billion dollars and want to do something creative, invest it in 100 startups. But if you want to spend a billion dollars through a big corporation, you should use that corporation's comparative advantage -- which is generally scale, not creativity.
Why would it be bad that all risky initiatives start small instead of eg accidentally ruining the whole healthcare, education or policing system with a single decision?
In this case, I think there was more than a little traction for a specific kind of social site, which turned into a crater, so it's not surprising somebody would build exactly what existed before.
