An interesting question. The network effect - the requirement that users can interact with each other - obviously complicates it. Here are a few ideas, which could also be combined in some ways:
A. Eliminate the vertical integration: Infrastructure, UI, advertising, etc. I'm not sure that resolution, by itself, would sufficiently address the problems mentioned in the article.
B. Break it up horizontally, whether geographically or some other arbitrary way, and require they all follow open standards that allow interoperability. If you think of it, that's no different than the Bell breakup - they remained interoperable; people using one post-AT&T company could call someone on another.
C. Both A & B: Different companies could create different UIs, as one example, competing to provide different kinds of user experiences to different markets - one-size-fits-all probably isn't the best solution anyway, especially for an industry selling to every subculture on the globe. The same could apply to other layers, such as advertising: B2B analytics companies would compete to sell differentiated services to advertisers. (It would be essential, IMHO, that the new social network system provide users with opt-out, complete privacy - maybe they could sell their personal info to competing buyers of it.)
The more I think about it, the better it sounds. From this perspective Facebook seems like an awkward monopoly - trying to be all things, on so many layers, to all people and businesses, profiting from monopolistic control, and preventing what seems like (at first impression) the vast innovations that competition would bring if it was opened up.
My realization is this: There's no reason one company must run the entire social network for users to benefit from network effects. Plenty of systems provide network effect benefits without central control - the entire Internet and its protocol stacks, the web, email ...
An interesting question. The network effect - the requirement that users can interact with each other - obviously complicates it. Here are a few ideas, which could also be combined in some ways:
A. Eliminate the vertical integration: Infrastructure, UI, advertising, etc. I'm not sure that resolution, by itself, would sufficiently address the problems mentioned in the article.
B. Break it up horizontally, whether geographically or some other arbitrary way, and require they all follow open standards that allow interoperability. If you think of it, that's no different than the Bell breakup - they remained interoperable; people using one post-AT&T company could call someone on another.
C. Both A & B: Different companies could create different UIs, as one example, competing to provide different kinds of user experiences to different markets - one-size-fits-all probably isn't the best solution anyway, especially for an industry selling to every subculture on the globe. The same could apply to other layers, such as advertising: B2B analytics companies would compete to sell differentiated services to advertisers. (It would be essential, IMHO, that the new social network system provide users with opt-out, complete privacy - maybe they could sell their personal info to competing buyers of it.)
The more I think about it, the better it sounds. From this perspective Facebook seems like an awkward monopoly - trying to be all things, on so many layers, to all people and businesses, profiting from monopolistic control, and preventing what seems like (at first impression) the vast innovations that competition would bring if it was opened up.
My realization is this: There's no reason one company must run the entire social network for users to benefit from network effects. Plenty of systems provide network effect benefits without central control - the entire Internet and its protocol stacks, the web, email ...