The splintering of the Internet. Say it out loud. Let it roll off your tongue.
I like this topic for much the same reason I like horror movies. I cannot look away, even though the action turns my stomach. And, though I am not a sadist, I want to see the plot play out — I am just a little curious to see who gets an axe and who escapes the chain-saw.
In short, watching the splintering of the Internet is a version of bird watching for nerds, with a bit of Hitchcock thrown in.
Ben Kunz suggests a label for the phenomenon — calling it the rise of the “Splinternet” — and he tried to popularize it recently in a Business week article. He borrowed the phrase from Josh Bernoff, a well known analyst at Forrester (and Kunz gave Bernoff ample credit).
Any short and self-explanatory label beats a long and confusing one, so the splinternet has much to recommend it as a label. There also have been many less snappy labels proposed for this phenomenon. This one is snappy.
But, if you look closely, this one is a bit confusing too. My goal is to unpack the label in this post.
Let me rephrase that, and signal where I intend to go. The Internet should no longer be called a “network of networks”, as it was called two decades ago. That era has passed. Commercialization has brought with it a new structure, a “network of platforms”. The splintering of the Internet describes the results of platform competition on the Internet.
Sometimes it resembles a horror movie. It is not all bad, however. This requires explanation.