Results tagged “networks”

Bob Metcalfe's most famous pronouncement is known these days as Metcalfe's Law, the idea that the value of a network increases with the scale of its number of members. Metcalfe formulated this concept in the context of telecommunications networks, but it is broadly applied to online social networks as well, and taken almost as an article of faith when designing new networked systems.

What happens, though, if a user on a service breaks the connection the network? A member of the network could do this either by disconnecting from the network (temporarily or permanently) or by choosing to omit or falsify some of the metadata that connects them to the network.

Why would someone make the network less pervasive or reliable? Well, there are lots of reasons. danah has admirably outlined some of the social reasons that teens disconnect, and of course I've been rambling for a while about the fact that unexpected expansions of existing networks often negatively impact those with less social privilege. But there are lots of other reasons people would want to unplug from networks that are smaller, or less focused on personal data, than services like Facebook. On GitHub, while forking is a feature, some who choose to collaborate on code there might be unwilling or legally unable to allow certain types of collaboration, and may want to sever their work's connection to the network of collaborators there while still using the robust technical capabilities of the service. On systems with tag-based navigation like Flickr and Delicious, tagging provides personal utility for information that a user wants to keep private, but the available privacy settings necessarily sever that photo or link's connection to the rest of the network that shares its tags.

In short, there are legitimate reasons users would want to contradict a service provider's desire to maximize the network effects of their community. These reasons primarily center around privacy, control, security, policy and other social considerations that provide important justifications for resisting the pull of Metcalfe's Law. But current network providers are often tempted to disable, circumvent, or modify the terms of a user's connection to the network in order to satisfy the provider's business goals, resulting in a sort of "connectivity creep" as we see today in Facebook's ever-evolving privacy policies, but as we'll inevitably see across a large number of network-focused sites. Right now network providers have a disincentive to give users the power to sever their connection to the network, even in limited ways, because it could jeopardize the growth of the network itself.

Maybe there's a way to reconcile this tension.

A Metcalfe Tax

Today, the low-level layers of our communications networks are ideally designed to see breakage as damage and route around it. But perhaps the social layers of our networks should see breakage as opportunity, and build revenue models around it.

There's a model for this already: GitHub. When a user wants to use a non-open source license, or keep their code private, they can pay for the ability to do so. This is important, because using a closed license breaks the network effects that open source licenses are designed to enable around code modification, and obviously keeping code private breaks the network effect of being able to see the history of a project or contributor.

Could other services adopt this model? Let's consider the biggest of them all: Facebook. If Facebook simply charged a nominal fee (it could be different prices in different parts of the world) to give users full, rich control over the ways they are connected to and discoverable by the network, how would things be different? First, Facebook would directly profit from users who wanted control over their presence, turning them from a thorn in Facebook's side into their best customers. Second, Facebook would have a bottom-line motivation to keep making better, more usable, more powerful privacy controls in order to serve them, instead of often treating privacy features as an afterthought. Third, the users who value their privacy or control would be more likely to advocate the service to their friends instead of warning them away, since they would have their primary concern addressed. And finally, the places where a user's information or identity is shared on the network would become much more clear and predictable if some parts of those interfaces were designated as paid-only features.

Now, "payment" in this case doesn't have to just mean dollars. In our newly gameplay-obsessed industry, maybe some networks would allow users to pay for these privacy features by completing tasks or performing functions that were important or valuable to the site. But overall, the process would be the same: The site would benefit from users who have legitimate reasons to not stay completely plugged in to the network all the time. And a precedent would be set for having the site be rewarded for honoring those desires, instead of constantly pushing against them.

So, which site's going to be the next to build a Metcalfe Tax into its business model? Seems like one of those rare delightful moments where a new site's business model could be inherently aligned with the desires of its users, instead of working in tension with them as the network grows.

I love the Internet. I love lots of things that are on the Internet. I have less love for things that want to undermine the Internet.

Tim O'Reilly, The War for the Web:

If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. In my talks over the years, I've argued that there are two models of operating system, which I have characterized as "One Ring to Rule Them All" and "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," with the latter represented by a routing map of the Internet.

The first is the winner-takes-all world that we saw with Microsoft Windows on the PC, a world that promises simplicity and ease of use, but ends up diminishing user and developer choice as the operating system provider.

The second is an operating system that works like the Internet itself, like the web, and like open source operating systems like Linux: a world that is admittedly less polished, less controlled, but one that is profoundly generative of new innovations because anyone can bring new ideas to the market without having to ask permission of anyone.

I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects.

One of the points I've made repeatedly about Web 2.0 is that it is the design of systems that get better the more people use them, and that over time, such systems have a natural tendency towards monopoly.

And so we've grown used to a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we've been readying ourselves for one dominant social network.

Doc Searls, Beyond Social Media:

Missing in action is credit to what goes below private platforms like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook — namely the Net, the Web, and the growing portfolio of standards that comprise the deep infrastructure, the geology, that makes social media (and everything else they support) possible.

Look at four other social things you can do on the Net (along with the standards and protocols that support them): email (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, MIME); blogging (HTTP, XML, RSS, Atom); podcasting (RSS); and instant messaging (IRC, XMPP, SIP/SIMPLE). Unlike private social media platforms, these are NEA: Nobody owns them, Everybody can use them and Anybody can improve them. That’s what makes them infrastructural and generative. (Even in cases where protocols were owned, such as by Dave Winer with RSS, efforts were made to remove ownership as an issue.)

Tweeting today is in many ways like instant messaging was when the only way you could do it was with AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and ICQ. All were silos, with little if any interoperabiity. Some still are.

Chris Messina, The Death of the URL:

The rise of the “app store mentality” is a direct attack on the web, and on the very nature of free discovery and choice built upon URL-based hyperlinks. By depriving us the ability to pick and choose which “stores” we shop from on these devices — we’re empowering a new breed of middle men and ceding to them monopoly control over our digital experience. The architecture of the web was intended to withstand such threats — but that all changes when the hardware makers get into the content business! Even though developers are beginning to see the dark side of this faustian bargain, the momentum is huge — and big business smells money.

By removing our ability to navigate, choose, and share freely — these app stores are exchanging our freedom for a promise that they’ll keep us safe, give us everything we need, and do all the choosing of what’s “good enough” for us — all starting at ninety-nine cents a hit.

We cannot say we were not warned. We will not be able to say "nobody saw this coming". It's clear that, even those who are privileged by access and wealth and the ability to amplify their own voices have anticipated that we'll all be disenfranchised by the private companies that own and control our networks of communication. And yet, most of our effort and ambition in the technology industry are not going towards building for the open web. Most communities that are disadvantaged are still trying to win on networks that they don't own and will never control. Most of us are still cheering when the most powerful voices in culture and society embrace closed networks, instead of properly criticizing them for doing so.

I am still optimistic; Apple's control over smartphone usage with the iPhone today is but a sliver compared to AOL's enormous control over Internet access a decade ago, and AOL still eventually crumbled in the face of open standards. But the web's victory over the proprietary networks that have been built on top of it is not inevitable — it's going to take lots of hard work. And right now, it's not just the attention that's disproportionately lavished on proprietary platforms that want to undermine the open web, it's the money too. We'll have to turn those strengths into weaknesses if we're going to undo the trend towards disempowerment and centralization that's going on right now.

This, for me, is a social issue, a cultural issue, and a political issue, not just a technological issue. Perhaps we need to speak of it that way more often, to make the stakes clear.