More on (not) “brand loyalty”

07 Feb 2006

In my response-requested post of last evening, it was perhaps a little unclear what I was proposing as a state-of-the-web hypothesis.

To clarify:

1. I believe there may exist a commonality of service usage within particular peer groups.
2. This commonality may or may not be bound by any particular brand
3. There is (entirely speaking from my personal experience here — hence the request for wider comment) minimal overlap between services (see 1.) within peer groups
4. As a part of this, the chief motivator in electing a network is not the network itself or particular functionality, but rather the other ‘peers’ the network provides access to (n.b. chief exception to this is niche services, Skype being a good example. It’s great for voice, horrible for chat, and mediocre for video. Hence, even I know a few people who have Skype accounts, they/I rarely use it/sign in unless required.)

Of these points, the most oft-acknowledged in the past is the last (See Metcalfe’s law, and subsequently Reed’s law). But both of these “laws” fail to evaluate the potential value of a network that will, in all probability, never be realised due to competition/service fragmentation.

I’m not asserting service fragmentation is a BadThing, but I do believe that big service providers’ federation initiatives/common standardised platforms are the only way forward– short of us all waiting for a monopoly to emerge… unlikely in the present climate, and improbable in the extreme in the way that Steve desires (a universal service provider environment).