Rethinking Walled Gardens, But Coming To The Same Conclusion
from the eh,-no dept
It's become dogma among many that the 'Walled Garden' approach to the web is a failed idea, with AOL being the classic case. So it's interesting to see that some are challenging this idea on the grounds that in a technology's early stages walled gardens are necessary to ensure ease of use among consumers. In other words, according to the argument, a store like iTunes, which made it simple to sync the music store and the device, helped users get used to the idea of digital music. But users were getting their music online well before iTunes; it's just that the labels wanted a walled garden to protect their content. The case of AOL is interesting, because in the beginning the simplicity of associating the ISP with content clearly appealed to a lot of people. The problem with a cash cow like AOL is that the company was inclined to preserve its status and fight the natural evolution towards openness, as opposed to embrace it. So does the walled garden approach make sense in the still-early days of the wireless web? Clearly, the carriers would like to think so, but unlike the early days of the internet, users already know the web's full potential and are spoiled by it. A stripped-down, limited-functionality system will only go so far, as users wait around for a more robust offering. Still, the lessons of AOL and iTunes aren't to be taken lightly; focusing on usability is a good idea, walled garden or not.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Controlled growth
That is the only practical use of the walled garden model imho. The problem comes when the service works, has a massive uptake and the fools try to bound the growth of it into the wider network. It's a king Canute stance, you can't kid people that your world is all there is, nothing outside to see and hope to control the way users employ and integrate your service with other systems.
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Yes and...
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Wireless Walled Garden
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Maybe....
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Walled Gardens do have their uses
My mom sure wasn't. Probably not your mom either. Would you want to have to walk her through the use of any fly-by-night P2P application?
Mainstream consumers really do need The Big Shiny Button and No Way To Screw Up, even for technologies that have been around a long time (like video games, which I re-discover--to my horror--every time we focus test something).
AOL had a ton of other issues, but I think its biggest was that it tried to put a wall around the Internet. Too big to contain. Music? That's easy to wrap your head around, and that's probably why iTunes is so successful.
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walled forums
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walled origins
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