WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

By the way, this whole problem of network-effect based lock-in was already solved for telephony in the old days. Why do we have to solve it again?

Someone said the problem of WhatsApp is network effects. Network effects are fine.

Email benefits from network effects. The difference is that email is designed to be decentralized and from the beginning had many clients with open protocols. IRC similar. And of course, the web browser itself. DNS.

Back when these were invented, people had many different operating systems and architectures, so the protocol was more important than the client/server. Today, we have about three platforms: web, iOS and Android, meaning you can reach millions of users with software rapidly, rather than the slow way of pushing a protocol. There’s less incentive to have decentralization and there’s money to be made. Protocols require cooperation and therefore move slower. SMS and IRC and email don’t feel modern because they move at glacial pace of cooperation.

I think therefore it’s harder today to push a decentralized, more free protocol than it was when we had more OS/arch diversity. When in a quasi-mono-culture, protocols take a back seat. People don’t ask about it or know what they are. The ratios are flipped: we have basically three OSes and a very large diversity of app/services all incompatible and each locking you in.

> Free calls helped it grow to become the de-facto communication platform in many other countries.

Other countries? Other from what? The non-other country isn't defined in the paragraph leading to this sentence.

Like many people I detest Facebook and don't defend it. But this is sloppy writing and sloppy thinking.

So what were his alternatives? That society be made up of loosely-connected hermits such as himself?

If you're going to have anything resembling a community, you're going to need strongly enforced norms (aka "oversocialization") that minimize internal strife and division. This is true for hunter-gatherer bands and continent-spanning civilizations.

WhatsApp gained many users at first by running on most of the early feature phones (largely Java ME if I’m not mistaken). These days you target two platforms, iOS and Android, and you’re done, but back then running everywhere was a big feature.

Interesting article, I find domestication analogy quite apt.