Facebook was using a form of click bait marketing in early days, supposed to place advertisements more regional, never happened. After brief testing walked away, I think many lost using this form of pre-paid advertising.
Tsū ended up being multi-level marketing within social media, needless to say did not work.
Mobile Marketing originally captured my interest, this led me into crypto and learning about blockchain. South African developer Riccardo Spagni with Monero, Charlie Shrem another I followed, fascinating in the beginning, until big scammers arrived or governments simply did not like the concept.
Ideas at first were great, something I now warn people who ask, your keys your crypto nothing is ever 100% fool proof.
I started "boosting" the posts on my business page once they throttled down organic post outreach but they gradually made it more and more expensive. You could actually choose the locale and demographics you wanted to reach but it was so expensive it just didn't make sense anymore.
It sounds like you were in very early! I had some contact with Charlie in the early days of Steemit. He was orchestrating the design of a custom sterling silver Steemit ring with a Pennsylvania jeweler. A bunch of us put in preorders and it ended up being a not-so-great experience. I finally got the ring but it took months and dozens of emails.
I agree with you, so much of the original idealism of those early years is gone now. There's still some left in the Bitcoin community. It can be so much more than a get-rich-quick scheme. People will start to realize this when the traditional banking system fails and they're forced to.
Got too crazy between big players, now everything has to move rattle or roll to capture eyeballs, very tedious and expensive adding extra strain to small business.
Early days were fun, setting up laptop to 'mine' (when we still had electricity, reasonable internet connection), lost some, gained some, invested lost again, it was a great learning curve, things changed. Both guys I mentioned were on Steemit for a short period of time in the beginning.
Rinse, repeat carry on in life, I was one eager to see finance sector upgrade, not so sure anymore with the greed factor, big whales pushing folk out or simply having to watch your back all the time.