Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Dec 2001, Michael Turner wrote:
>> My understanding of the Strand comment is that i-mode is a "failure"
>> from an ideological perspective: you basically need a near-monopoly
>> walled garden to make it work. Which is considered evil, evil.
>> And that might just be for starters.
>
> Uh...sorry for getting a bit lost here, but I've been hearing about
> this "walled garden" a lot, and I was wondering if someone could
> explain it to me.
I thought the "walled garden" was where internet hippies in SF grew the
marijuana they used to pay their bandwidth bills... I could be wrong
though.
> I understand that on the regular web there is no "walled garden,"
> right? So when I install my Yahoo DSL service and discover that
> the setup program they gave me made Yahoo my browser's home page,
> I can go and change that by typing in a new URL. (Or I could just
> click on Yahoo-provided links.)
How about Lexus-Nexus?
this predates the Internet popular, but you can find stuff there
that you'll *never* find on the internet. Can you even access
Lexus-Nexus via the internet these days, or do they still require
you to use specific terminal/modem equipment?
Trade-a-Plane?
just another subscription internet information service for mercs,
drug runners and used airplane salesdroids looking for clapped out
hueys, turboprops and c172s.
AOL; keyword: walled garden?
probably a little closer... it took them a while, but eventually
you could have both the Internet and your AOL client working on
the same machine (between microsoft "upgrades") and use your own
ISP but still pay AOL for access (to what? your "screen name"?)
MS Passport?
probably what MS hopes for but will miss the mark... I'm curious
how Passport will provide information the ability to leak into the
Passport system (a la Paypal)... they're sure not going to do it
by forcing goods/service providers to choose between Passport and
other payment/authentication methods.
NTT+ATT+AOL+tLA?
Time will tell. Too many moving parts for my taste. The grift
gets lost in all that friction... unless large fish start munching
on small fish (too bad there are no small fish in this group).
My personal concept of a "walled garden" was first developed in the
book "Burn Rate" where the AOL exec talks about the propensity of
lusers to buy anything that AOL decides to present to them in that 20
second period while they're logging in... and that's what placement
on the menu and mediation on NTT's part does... the resulting spam
problem is a symptom of the effect.
Sure you can pull up other stuff... walled gardens don't exclude
externally available materials; they make it easier for your to
access value-added information for your exclusive consumption and
end up getting paid on both ends of the equation because they do:
users pay for a subscription/access
content producers pay for advertizing/placement
The average consumer's propensity to part with money for goods and
services advertised in the content/placement is the grift that keeps
the wheel spinning. NTT just makes it a little easier. The yahoo
internet advertising bubble burst a long while ago and NTT is never
going to reach that rock-star TV advertising stratosphere level, but
I believe they at least want to make the exercise sustainable (After
all, if JR's passenger fees didn't pay for the electricity that it
took to run the escalators JR put in with the hopes of reaching the
point where fees did cover the electricity costs, I'm sure people
*would* be talking about the "escalator/transport bubble" Don't
you just hate bad analogies?)
Received on Sat Dec 29 15:36:18 2001