A New Internet

The article argues that social networks depend on controlling their social graphs, which is why no shared protocol for social applications exists at the scale of Meta or Twitter. It explains that platforms earn revenue by keeping users engaged and collecting data for targeted advertising, and that a Web2 product with open social graphs risks competition and declining revenue. It cites Clubhouse, which was valued at $3.4 billion, as an example of how a social graph can vanish, and it points to OpenSocial, proposed in 2007, as an earlier attempt at graph portability.