The network economy is founded on technology, but can only be built on relationships. It starts with chips and ends with trust. -- Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy


Web 2.0, like technology, is all about making connections.

Maybe you'll connect Internet users with web publishers, like search engines do. Maybe you'll connect Internet users with each other, like social networks do. Maybe you'll connect advertisers with publishers, like ad networks do.

The big players -- Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. -- are in the business of managing all your connections.

In their ideal world, any time you wanted to connect to someone, you would need to go through them.


How do these types of ecosystems get defeated? Meaning what is going to come along and make people shift away from Google's ad network, from MySpace's lame social network, from Facebook's closed prison masquerading as an open platform?

It won't be the applications; while Google can currently win because of their knack for coupling killer user interfaces with unbeatable server infrastructure, those assets are well on their way to being commoditized. Just look at how many social networks have been launched, how many video distribution sites have been launched, how many search engines there are.

The technology is only getting cheaper and only getting better.

There is one asset, though, that any big platform player -- meaning anyone aiming to intermediate all of your connections -- desperately needs. It's arguably the most valuable asset of all.

Trust.

As the technology becomes cheaper and cheaper, eventually anyone will be able to launch their own ad network as slick as Google's. Perhaps a publisher, having grown weary of Google's mysterious pricing, will decide to abandon Google to roll their own ad network. Maybe not today, but at some point, the technology will be cheap enough to make it a very real possibility. The only question: will they have the trust needed to attract other publishers and advertisers?

In this way, the future of winning the ecosystem war is in establishing trust within an ecosystem -- and then leveraging this trust to create a wholly new ecosystem. A powerful influencer, one with the ability to start memes, will be able to pull people away from an existing ecosystem and into a new one.

You could say disrupting ecosystems is about invading ecosystems, and causing a mutiny.

Bottom line: like 9/11, ecosystem disruption in the future will be an inside job.


Next time, we'll wrap this series up by providing some resources to help you learn more about 9/11 and web 2.0.

Other Posts in This Series

9/11 and Web 2.0
9/11 Truth and Media 2.0
9/11 and Management 2.0
9/11 and Disruption in Web 2.0
9/11 is the Revolution to Bridge the Gap