It is perhaps an interesting coincidence that the wiki page where new users are encouraged to experiment and "play" safely is called the Sandbox.... "sidewalks work because they permit local interactions to create global order... the information networks of sidewalk life are fine-grained enough to permit higher-level learning to emerge"
A secondary consideration is what type of interaction an application is building towards in the long run. Is is about one-to-one interactions or broadcasting to large audiences? What percentage of your users do you want creating as opposed to just consuming? Is your app best served by a graph of people who know each other in real life or by a graph... See more
If Medium were built on open data, Substack wouldn't have to build an editor, interface, and CMS from scratch. They'd build a subscription module that operates on top of the Medium editor and content.
In construction, on the other hand, relationships between firms are much weaker and shorter term. Project teams change frequently from project to project, and being selected for a project team is often largely a function of being the low bidder. As a result of these short term, transactional relationships, firms typically don’t spend time or effort... See more