Social software locks you in. . .
March 28, 2007
Dare Obasanjo makes a great point that open source ‘denies vendor lock-in‘ in contrast to the social software movement that depends on network effects. He explains,
The more users you have, the more valuable the site is to each user. Having access to Slashcode didn’t cause the social lock-in that Slashdot had on geek news sites. That site was only overtaken when a new service that harnessed network effects better than they did showed up on the scene (i.e. Digg). Similarly, how much value do you think there is to be had from a snapshot of the source code for eBay or Facebook being made available? This is one area where Open Source offers no solution to the problem of vendor lock-in.
