Content For Dummies (In Defense Of Walled Gardens)

There’s an interesting piece here from Andrew Cole, president of consulting firm CSMG Adventis, which basically argues that in order for digital content to take off more walled gardens are needed because the vast majority of users are too stupid/ignorant to handle compatibility issues. He may have a point. However, there’s a vast difference between a carrier offering an end-to-end software, hardware and shopping system that is fully integrated and easy to use and that carrier preventing the customer from using anything else. He goes on to write “CSMG Adventis is also advising its major telecom clients to develop in parallel a set of network capabilities that will allow other companies to offer their own walled garden services”. Which sounds sort of confusing…customers will be in a walled garden unless they try to go somewhere else? I think it’s saying that carriers should offer access to select portals — for example, Verizon could offer access to the Disney mobile portal, but you wouldn’t be able to get an indie cartoon. At least, that’s my interpretation of it.
The article ends with “Until plug-and-play standards and hardware interoperability become an in-home reality, there will be more รข

Comments have been disabled for this post