You should keep going because if Facebook is making the same product it might mean you are on to something. There is lots of examples of two companies who have the same product and both are successful, think of Uber & Lyft or McDonalds and Burger King. Lastly it seems like your product is taking way too long, try making a minimum viable product with only the essential features and see if you can get feedback on!

you refine your problem, to serve a specific subset of your original target customers. when slack started they knew they would lose (to microsoft) selling to corporations as their main business communication system, so they focused on individual teams. Also Twitch was born of focusing on a subset of their original users (from anyone that wanted to live stream to gamers)

Focus on sub niche and make your product best for them, the big problem top companies have they make product general enough to have big market size for making billions while we can be happy with millions

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Before I get to do I wanna know more. Like 1, did ya build a product for 2 years ontop of facebook? if yes, you knew this going in, and you had no alt network strategy? 2, if the concept is tangent to fb the its a race to users and then happiness, when I use you, I feel so damn happy, thats a hard model to live on, eventually you die or get acqu-hired, 3, find the other 3 startups the get killed when this happens as well, theres other people, are you further along, sell and get acquired, or merge and kick ass, or watch and see what happens, maybe fb will eat them and not you, 4, analyze the crap outa what they do marketing/product/happiness wise and try to be ahead of it, 5, make sure your tech has a meatier moat even if its purely perception, ideally you back it up with more than that. Overall yer not dead yet.

My first supervisor had similar problem - his idea was in progress when big IT company released very close product for free. He decided to quit while code was ready in about 50%. Also when he was doing the project, he found many contacts that were possible clients for his new starting company but not exactly interested in the product.

Keep going forward. If Facebook works on the same thing, you might be on a good track. Find your niche, something that would make an answer to "Why should I use X over Facebooks Y" compelling. Mark Zuckeberg once said that you can't win trying to copy Facebook. So don't ;) It's likely that your product has it's own niche and as history shows, it might be a bigger one ;)

The answer here totally depends on the market (not so much on the product). Hopefully if you spent that much time building something you have at least an idea of what the total market looks like, and how much of that market you need to capture to be successful. In that case, you need to (a) assess if you have any USPs that Facebook's alternative doesn't (or can't) have and (b) is there enough space in the market for you to still be successful with an 800 pound gorilla to compete with? If your model relied on you capturing 5% of the market... well, there are probably way more than 5% who would choose not to use the Facebook version just because it's Facebook. If your model assumed no competition, or that you have to have 75% of the market to be successful... well, I'm sorry but someone should've told you much earlier in your journey that the had an existential risk out there. This all assumes you're building the product with the intent of building a successful business! If you're doing it out of pure passion (i.e. YOU'LL be happy knowing that YOUR perfect solution to your problem exists), and the goal is to share that success with like-minded people... then it really doesn't matter, go build it. There's an immense satisfaction from building something that you know is the solution to a real problem. Satisfaction alone doesn't pay the bills, but if you're a maker at heart and you don't NEED this to be a financial success for you/your team/your families... then go for it! And a final tidbit, if it's a capability that Facebook's competitors might want to copy, and you're well along in building it, you have a non-zero chance of getting scooped up for your IP or your experience to help someone else roll this thing out and compete with FB just a little bit faster than they might have built it from scratch.

Keep on the track as long as your product attracts new customers. If the growth stops, there is a time to consider pivoting :)

Hey. First, try Facebook's one and then disrupt it with yours but new perspectives (: but the point is keep going, my opinion. May the force.., you know that..

I would also go for it! If Facebook is onto the same thing, it's likely that you have a good product market fit. As people said before, key is to find your own product and not just copy what they did or do or will do. Focus on your product and be inspired instead of devastated

One of the falsest notion that people starting on their entrepreneurial journey is the concept of "unique product" or doing something that no one else has done before. If you are building what you are building because you love it and you have the passion and drive to see it through, you are much more suitable to make it successful than a big corp, whose product strategy is always driven by inertia and fear of being irrelevant.

It can be frustrating when a competitor with seemingly unlimited resources pushes their way into your space. However, you can also view it as justification of what you are building. Get to know their product and its weaknesses and try to fill in the gaps with your own product. You can often find public message boards where customers are complaining about missing features and long running defects. Use these gaps to fuel your product and attract some of their customers.

You can't take for granted that your idea is good, that people will pay for your solution, or even that the problem which you aim to solve is real. In essence, build something that your intended users can use ASAP.

Definitely keep going, big tech doesn't always win. As an entrepreneur you have the gift of independence. You can try things out without risking your reputation, don't have to absolutely create "the next big thing" and are able to communicate with your target group more directly (and friendly). Worst case, if you're doing a good job, Facebook (or a competitor) buys you up.

I was building a social media application for missionaries to connect with their supporters back in the US. Then Facebook came out and made it possible with more features than I had imagined. I gave up because I couldn't compete, but I didn't understand the power of niches back then. Probably should have stuck with it.

Keep going if you can afford it financially. Difficult decision but if you do the marketing right, it can take off.

Keep going! But try to add something unique abd useful that Facebook doesn't have. Find Loopholes in Facebook's product and act on it. And try to finish your product as soon as possible.

how the heck would somebody spend 2 years building a product nowadays? you should have built it in 2 days, and then thrown it in the market for users to interact with so you could start iterating.

Pivot. Why would Facebook ruin your plans?