Interesting comparison, because the internet (coming out of a governmental and international history) is founded on a documented stack of open standards which have many implementations.
I don't know much about app.net and will happily admit to being wrong about this, but my impression was that they were offering a platform without any of the ingredients for duplicating that platform. In that respect, like Twitter, even if they promise not to cater to the advertising/user data industry.
I guess every company would like to become as indispensable to the internet as TCP/IP. Except that this isn't how it works - it has to be open and easily reproduced in order to become a thing like TCP/IP, which hurts monetization.
Indeed. In the end someone has to pay, and/or someone has to make some money to pay. It seems close to a zero-sum game - which is the point of capitalism and innovation, allowing technology to reach 100% of people and/or make the next unit of production equal to $0, and with digital software, it comes pretty damn close to $0 benefit for the next user.
I don't know much about app.net and will happily admit to being wrong about this, but my impression was that they were offering a platform without any of the ingredients for duplicating that platform. In that respect, like Twitter, even if they promise not to cater to the advertising/user data industry.
I guess every company would like to become as indispensable to the internet as TCP/IP. Except that this isn't how it works - it has to be open and easily reproduced in order to become a thing like TCP/IP, which hurts monetization.