{"id":23,"date":"2020-06-29T10:54:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-01-27T01:14:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-27T06:14:41","slug":"from-lock-in-to-trust-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/2020\/06\/29\/from-lock-in-to-trust-us\/","title":{"rendered":"From lock-in to &#8220;Trust us&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What struck me in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/24\/technology\/internet-middlemen.html\">this opinion piece<\/a>\u00a0is the depiction of how multisided (e.g., two-sided) platforms evolve, in an animated GIF by Ryan Kuo. Platform owners feel the need to say &#8220;Trust us&#8221; at some point, long after contractual relationships are established.<\/p>\n<p>Platform owners gain power and lock in participants (e.g., sellers, buyers, app developers, users) by accumulating network effects and creating switching costs*. More power leads to governance decisions that are increasingly one-sided\u00a0(e.g., decisions on application approval, product listings, content sharing, or commission\/fees). Conflict of interest arises quickly. Trust deteriorates.<\/p>\n<p>Lack of trust can make data centric companies vulnerable to disruption in the long term, even if network effects offer a protection in the short term. One sure way not to gain trust is having to say &#8220;Trust us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>*Cross-side network effects: The more sellers on a platform, the more value for buyers. More buyers join and more sellers follow. As a seller builds a profile full of five star reviews, switching becomes costly. Lock-in can also arise from same-side network effects. In a social platform, value for a user increases with more users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What struck me in this opinion piece\u00a0is the depiction of how multisided (e.g., two-sided) platforms evolve, in an animated GIF by Ryan Kuo. Platform owners feel the need to say &#8220;Trust us&#8221; at some point, long after contractual relationships are established. Platform owners gain power and lock in participants (e.g., sellers, buyers, app developers, users) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/87"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozer.gt\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}