There was a time when companies such as Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL controlled the Internet.
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Back the early days, during the 1990s, AOL came to be the dominant force online. Few who were around in that period can not remember the discs that were being sent out. They arrived in the mail and were placed in many major magazines. There simply was no way to avoid that company.
During that period, AOL looked insurmountable. It was the leading Internet company, one that was destined to rule forever. Or so many thought.
AOL's Advantage
AOL actually stood for America Online. That was the concept the company was promoting.
When the Internet first arrived, the general technical aptitude of the public was very low. Dealing with this new medium was really only a world of techies. Most did not jump to embrace what was taking place.
This changed with the introduction of AOL. Its platform simplified things a great deal for the average user. What is ironic, looking back, is how basic things truly were.
Most of the activity was centered around messenger service. The early days of the Internet enabled people to send messages back and forth to each other, something rather novel at the time. For services such as Prodigy, this was a difficult task.
AOL brought a package to the table that allowed not only messenger service but enabled one to receive information. Suddenly, news headlines and articles could appear as well as emails. The fact that it was all contained on one platform made it very successful.
Of course, this was the epitome of centralization. AOL controlled all the content that people saw. For the time it was fine yet that was changing also.
Information Yearns To Be Free
This is a saying that many ascribe to. Their belief is that, eventually, information gets out. It cannot be contained behind walls forever. This is precisely what AOL was doing.
Around that time, Tim Berners-Lee was developing the World Wide Web. Here we saw the mechanism which provided the Internet with its astonishing growth throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Now people were able to embark upon a system where a host of services showed up. Whereas people were limited with AOL only to what they provided, the Web suddenly because a place where all kinds of information along with services were popping up. The appeal of AOL was rapidly diminishing.
Before that happened, AOL was a major media player. If fact, it was the first company to rival its non-online counterpart. This led to the merger of the company with Time Warner, a $180 billion deal.
Like many of the other early Internet deals, this one was bound to blow up. The eventual value of AOL, like Yahoo, was pennies on the dollar.
Nevertheless, this shows the magnitude of the company before this happened.
A Company Eaten Away At
Speaking of the aforementioned Yahoo, and later Google, these were services that started to chip away at AOL's dominance.
Email services were the first mainstream application for the Internet. While AOL offered this, those companies specialized in it. Their early versions were basic yet they quickly added to their offerings. They incorporated news into their services all without having to install software.
For many years, people stuck with AOL simply because the hassle of changing one's email address. This was usually the older generations who fell into this category. As more younger people joined, they quickly signed up with the newer companies, forgoing AOL.
Over time, this ate away at AOL's customer base.
This shows the danger of being a walled ecosystem. While it is extremely profitable since the userbase is contained, eventually people end up breaking out. Innovation tends to be limited along with the inevitable company missteps. When this happens, as more options appear, we see the natural decline.
Will Facebook Be The New AOL?
Much of what is written here can obviously be applied to Facebook. We see how that is a walled system whereby that company is in control of everything. The banning of accounts while censoring information is becoming very well known.
Zuckerberg is one who appears out of touch with the general public. There is no doubt he understands human psychology and programs that into the algorithms. However, when truly grasping the way humans are, he does not seem to get it.
Facebook is very dictatorial in nature. They take the approach of forcing whatever their will upon the userbase. Thus far, it really has not hindered them.
The company also has some terrific foresight. Zuckerberg does understand where things are heading from a technological standpoint. However, the company cannot seem to overcome the missteps that keep befalling it. In fact, they are only accelerating.
For example, the vision of how Virtual Reality is going to play into things is well known. That company is ahead of everyone else. Nevertheless, the company botched it when it decided it was going to insert advertisements in its VR applications. This is not something the users wanted and it was soundly rejected.
This showed what Facebook thinks of the userbase. It is only looking to leverage all the data it acquired so as to sell it to willing advertisers. Quite frankly, it really does not care what they are either.
Being out of touch does not help when one is trying to help create the next generation of the Internet. The reason for this is that many believe it is going to be "experiencial". This means the user experience is all that matters. Obviously, this is not maximized by inserting ads everywhere for the platform's benefit.
Open Networks
Much like the World Wide Web, we are seeing networks being developed that are open. This aligns much better with the idea of experience over interaction.
Many are calling this the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. It is hard to dispute that the tokenization process is changing how people operate. No longer are they the product. Instead, they share in the financial success of the network. Since it is open, anyone is free to come and go.
Facebook is still operating from the "Walled Garden" approach. This is what took over the Internet after the fall of the likes of AOL. Internet giants emerged leveraging the network effect to control users. This became enormously profitable.
The question is whether this approach is going to be valid for much longer. Facebook is introducing its own token, one that will give he illusion of being part of Web 3.0. Sadly, it will just be dressing up the same centralized system.
Most people do not care about this stuff. What they do like, however, is options. They were not concerned about the fact that AOL was in control of everything until they realize they were missing out on a lot of things. That is where the Rubicon was crossed. Once people understood that, they started to migrate.
Will the same happen to Facebook? Only time will tell the answer to that. However, what we do know is that people will opt for other applications. The history with AOL proves that.
Therefore, it is best not to think of Facebook as insurmountable. The company might be on more fragile ground than any of us realize.
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