To break the monopoly of social networks, they need to be interoperable so that users can move from one social network to another easily, without loss of quality. Competition requires interoperability. This worked well for 19 thcentury railroads, for AT&T, and for telecom providers. And it will work well for…

Twitter is one of the smallest social networks in terms of daily active users (152 M) and revenue (US$ 3.5B in 2019). Compare this with Facebook’s 1.8B daily active users (US$ 71B revenue in 2019) or even with TikTok’s 800M daily active users. Yet, Twitter has a disproportional impact on…

This fall, Apple will release its iOS14 operating system. Or more accurately, it will release its iOS14 ecosystem. Previews of the update given by Apple, MacRumors, Techradar, and The Telegraph Technology reveal that nearly all of its new functions consist of improvements in the way it creates value from ecosystems…

Computer Weekly recently reported that the UK’s three political parties are collecting personal data on voters for targeted political advertising. They are not alone. Dutch political parties do it, Trump does it, Obama did it. What’s wrong with this? Why shouldn’t political parties be allowed to send messages to people…

Credit cards have reduced friction in commerce by creating the possibility to buy now and pay later. However, there is no free lunch and this reduction comes at a cost for cardholders and merchants, which creates a handsome revenue for card companies. In this blog we look at the credit…

Facebook is a platform on which users can distribute content, play games and organize information, publishers can broadcast content, and advertisers deliver targeted advertisements. To understand Facebook’s business model, we must understand Facebook’s ecosystem. In this blog, I present an overview of its ecosystem, present a few of the interactions…

The technology imperative is the norm that because technology exists, you need it. In the response to the Corona pandemic, we are seeing a lot of technology thrown at the problem, with the unquestioned assumption that we need it to fight the pandemic. It will be useful. Today, this is…

In 1986, the moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt published his famous essay On Bullshit in the Raritan Review.[1] Bullshitting, he says, is making a statement without regard for its truth value, in order to achieve some concealed goal. Politics and advertising, he said, are fields with a lot of bullshit. Frankfurt…