The midcentury consumer revolution was easy: make it cheap and convenient and you’ll do fine. When the internet was in its infancy, smart observers understood that useful decisions could be easily arrived at if we asked the question “What does the internet want?” Not the people who are using the internet, but the network itself. What does it thrive on? If you offered more person-to-person connection, more bandwidth, or more selection—the things that the internet itself was good at—you were likely to succeed regardless of anything else you did. The network effect was a symptom of understanding
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