Whoever Generates the Demand Captures the Value

Aggregation was the antithesis of the Web 2.0 promise; the best suppliers could do was either subject themselves to the Aggregator’s terms and try and make the best of it (call it the BuzzFeed strategy) or work to build a direct connection with customers that went around the Aggregators (the New York Times strategy); Twitter, though, may be on the ... See more

The ownership economy thesis is that value in past web platforms — Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Peer-to-peer networks/marketplaces, etc — is generated by users who never retain any of it. Users contribute value, but they don’t capture it.

The fundamental disruption of the Internet has been to turn this dynamic on its head. First, the Internet has made distribution (of digital goods) free, neutralizing the advantage that pre-Internet distributors leveraged to integrate with suppliers. Secondly, the Internet has made transaction costs zero, making it viable for a distributor to integr... See more

Web2 platforms have introduced many beneficial services and created considerable social and economic value over the years. However, wealth was mostly accumulated by the companies offering the services, and less by the general public contributing content and value to those services. Instead of decentralizing the world, Web2 platforms contributed to ... See more