Google and Facebook play the roles of central bankers for our attention economy. They represented a generation of “free-to-play” games that unlocked infinite consumer surplus and participation, and with increasing power as the brokers of the value exchange, they now require “paying to win”.

Ezra Klein asks: what comes first? the design of the internet, or what advertising needs on the internet? Tim Hwang think there is a deep path dependence in funding of platform companies. We have religious faith that if you aggregate a lot of attention online you will become the next Google/Facebook. We don't have a lot of examples of subscription

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The Times, Peretti allowed, has since refined a very good subscription business model, which has allowed it to make better journalism by hiring more and better talent. This is not a controversial opinion. But the next part may be: The New York Times, Peretti argued, can’t really be called “the paper of record” anymore — because of that same subscri... See more