AOL’s closed pay-for-play garden lost to the open Internet’s full variety

Evidence

In this, its pay-for-play content, AOL was setting up a system that would be the exact opposite of the Net Neutrality that prevailed on the Internet. That, in the long term, set up another reason for AOL’s downfall, for the walled garden ultimately was a weaker offering than the full variety offered on the Internet. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 747

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The walled garden versus open Internet dynamic is foundational historical material for the reader’s attention-industries project; could pair with the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s theme of closed vs. open systems.
• XREF: connects to: AOL’s walled-garden rents destroyed the dot-com partners it hosted — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 736; The tech industry reintroduced scarcity into the internet’s supposedly abundant space — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 723; AOL’s troll-infested collapse freed a huge attention market for successors to capture — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 987 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• AOL’s walled-garden rents destroyed the dot-com partners it hosted #corroborates (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 736
• AOL’s troll-infested collapse freed a huge attention market for successors to capture #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 987
• The tech industry reintroduced scarcity into the internet’s supposedly abundant space #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 723
• The Internet lets individuals bypass gatekeepers and create personalized symbolic environments #corroborates (0.70)