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Comment by Gormo | Hacker News Reader

I think the AOL comparison is very relevant. In the mid-90s, AOL was the first experience of online communication that a huge number of people had, and AOL grew rapidly; but its customer base eventually matured and discovered the broader internet, and AOL declined. There was a period without a hegemonic 'entry-level' online service, and Facebook eventually jumped into that void and dominated it.

But none of these services do anything that wasn't already available via incumbent technologies (which were somewhat inaccessible to non-geeks), e.g. BBSes, Usenet, IRC, IM, web forums, etc., and people have been developing more accessible iterations of these types of technologies (reddit, for example), and people will eventually migrate away from the constrained, privacy-compromising services like Facebook into the wider internet.

People say that the open web is dead, but I think the walled garden approach is never really long-term sustainable.

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People say that the open web is dead, but I think the walled garden approach is never really long-term sustainable.

I'm even more pessimistic than that about it. I think the real lesson of all these predecessors such as AOL is that you can't put a wall around the garden in the first place. You can say you have, but that would be putting your mouth in a place your money shouldn't follow.

People thought nobody would leave the AOL because of network effects - if all your friends are there, and your Internet social life is centered there, then that would create a barrier to exit. What it seems to really create is something more like the effect that happens in real-life social gatherings: For a while people may stay, but only because of social pressure. They're actually ready to leave, they're just waiting for a cue that causes them to be comfortable with leaving. That usually comes in the form of someone else finally deciding to go. That triggers a chain reaction so that all of a sudden, a party that seemed to be still going strong empties out all at once and without much warning.

A lot like the WeLL, AOL, MySpace, etc.

And that trigger can probably happen any time something new attracts a critical mass of early adopters; then the network effect of the walled garden actually become a detriment to the old network as it enables rapid defection to a competitor.

People have been dismissing geek-centric alternativesl like Diaspora for having a built-in limitation on growth, but most communities on the internet - and the internet itself - grew out of geeks gradually building up enough of a user base to pull in everyone else. Maybe it just takes time.

BTW, I received my first Diaspora invite this week.

> I think the walled garden approach is never really long-term sustainable.

You don't think so, because ... ?

If we are to actually _read_ his comment, because of precedents like AOL.

Before AOL there was Compuserve and Delphi. They were all eventually forced to open up their walled gardens.

Facebook is trying to be the middleman in its user's online experience, and we all know what the internet does to middlemen.

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