Provably Better, pt 2: Web 2.0, Syndication and the Interpersonal Internet

[Continued from Part 1]

The truly successful, disruptive initiatives (and companies: Google, Amazon, E-Bay, ec.) on the Internet have been successful not only in syndicating their content, and in syndicating their technologies - they've successfully syndicated their very business models.

You make money making money for them.

While there's been all this discussion of B2B and B2C and clicks-and-mortar businesses, the real Internet has been subtly altering the business landscape by cracking the C2B (consumer-to-business) code: enhancing consumer behaviours and values through a positive reinforcement of traffic and, ultimately, dollars.

E-Bay (including PayPal) is only the most obvious and literal form of this. As people have known for some time, its not just about the direct benefit, but also about the ancillary traffic and goodwill they don't have to work to generate.

And because of this positive spiral they've spun up, these are not just the successful endeavors of today: they are poised to capture ongoing opportunities in the marketplace.

This is the new network effort - and I'd argue that its provably better.

But my key point is this - its NOT, nor will it EVER be, an insurmountable lead (in principle :P); the rapid rise of Skype, MySpace, and even Google itself prove that the real value of this Interpersonal Internet is still PEOPLE.

Humans are the node leaves of the network, and we're a fickle bunch :) As trust metric attack pathology demonstrates, this network can be attack resistant, but only for as long as you do good.

Perhaps "Do No Evil" is a cannier mission than we think.

Perhaps it recognizes a substantial truth, that this Interpersonal Internet (I2?) is enabled through people as the endpoints: the "last mile" is always about us - if that's not too very old media.