Network adoption tends to follow an S-curve. As networks climb the curve, the relationship between corporate networks and their complements unfolds in a predictable pattern. The engagement starts out friendly. Networks do everything they can to recruit complements like software developers and content creators to make their services more compelling. The network effects are weak at this early stage. Users and complements have many choices, and they're not locked in yet. The perks are flowing, people are happy, everything's kumbaya.

Meanwhile they take no account of time, of which they will never have a fresh and larger supply: they substitute new occupations for old ones, one hope leads to another, one ambition to another: they do not seek for an end to their wretchedness, but they change its subject.

Everything for which we are dependent on chance is uncertain: the higher it rises, the more opportunities it has of falling. Moreover, no one takes any pleasure in what is about to fall into ruin: very wretched, therefore, as well as very short must be the lives of those who work very hard to gain what they must work even harder to keep: they obtain what they wish with infinite labour, and they hold what they have obtained with fear and trembling.

All the greatest blessings are enjoyed with fear, and no thing is so untrustworthy as extreme prosperity: we require fresh strokes of good fortune to enable us to keep that which we are enjoying, and even those of our prayers which are answered require fresh prayers.

That most arrogant Persian king, when his army stretched over vast plains and could not be counted but only measured, burst into tears at the thought that in less than a hundred years none of all those warriors would be alive: yet their death was brought upon them by the very man who wept over it, who was about to destroy some of them by sea, some on land, some in battle, and some in flight, and who would in a very short space of time put an end to those about whose hundredth year he showed such solicitude.

Then the relationship sours. As the network moves up the S-curve, the platform begins to wield more power over users and third parties. Network effects strengthen, but growth slows. The relationship between the platform and its complements turns hostile. Positive sum becomes zero-sum. To keep profits coming, platforms start capturing more of the money that flows through the network. This is what happened when Facebook strangled Vine and other apps, and when Twitter swallowed its third party offspring whole. Platforms eventually cannibalize their complements.

Corporate networks beat protocol networks because of superior features and sustainable funding. Only email and the web, legacies of the early internet, have resisted the centralizing forces of corporate networks, thanks to their unique history, longevity, and entrenched customs—an instance of the "Lindy effect," where the longer something has been around, the likelier it is to stick around. Although there is always the possibility that even these protocol networks could get subsumed by corporate networks, even if it's hard to imagine.