socialmedian: The Internet abhors a funnel

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The Internet abhors a funnel

Source: Scripting News

Oct 17, 2009

Summary

This might be one of those fundamental Internet laws, or it may just turn out to be a way to express another one.

The Internet is a bunch of pipes and tunnels with processors located at the junctions and at the ends of the pipes. Some of the processors are little, things like iPhones, routers, blogs or webcams and some are huge like Google's cloud.

All is good until something comes along that tries to get the whole Internet to flow through it. Compelling things that get more compelling the more stuff you flow through them. Instead of being shaped like pipes or tunnels, these things are shaped like funnels (as illustrated to the right).

Platforms that are owned by companies start out as funnels. They may trick you for a while into believing that they made of pipes and tunnels, after all it would be suicide for the platform owner to turn the lovely ecosystem into a funnel, but companies can't help themselves. They compete internally to control resources and to the people inside the company, the platform looks like just another resource to fight over. Eventually it ...Read the full article

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