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Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):

s0@cathode.church ("s0: Soldering Saboteuse") wrote:

I’ve been thinking about the “three Es” (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) of corporations to open standards & technologies, and how it’s somewhat similar to the way users are pulled in, squeezed and dropped in a cycle.

I hereby humbly propose a new “four Es” for the user-facing side:

“Entice, Entrench, Enclose, Expire.”

Step one, Entice, is grabbing users. Look how great and fun it is here on Flibber, the new social media! everything is free, your data is secure, there aren’t any ads, we’re adding features! Hype hype hype!

Step two, Entrench — make it the “place to be”. Get chummy with governments, press, influencers. Acquire competitors. Users are on Flibber without even noticing now. Heavily push Flibber integrations into all sorts of areas of people’s lives.
But you need to make money, too. Start selling user data. Introduce ads slowly like a frog in a pot. Start pushing exclusivity to your business partners so they push all their customers to you. You’ve stopped doing any R&D for users’ actual experience, now it’s about how to sell them on. And when you’re big enough, your competitors will starve.

Step three, Enclose. “Snap” go the APIs. Sorry that’s deprecated. No longer available. Sorry that requires exorbitant access fees. Open this link in our app to view that page.
Users aren’t profitable anymore — selling them is. Lie harder to everyone, and charge more for the privilege. You’re judge, jury and accountant now. Jack up the integration and business license costs. What are they going to do, not use Flibber? That’s where their customers and constituents expect to get news now. Discontinue features that are expensive. Hell, strongarm your own infrastructure suppliers into exploitative contracts too — you’re too big to turn down.

And the final stage: Expire. Eventually, the calculus doesn’t work anymore. Your investors want more money, but there’s nothing left to squeeze.
Dump Flibber on a private equity firm to rip out the guts, and let it crumble, scapegoating a new CEO.