Yahoo’s core business is worth next to nothing, and buyers are struggling to see if there’s any there there. Twitter’s market cap just plummeted after a bad earnings report. Given that news, it seems that businesses that have dominated their markets are learning that the magic elixir of network effects and winner-takes-all advantages are about as reliable as cures for baldness.
Economists developed the theory of network effects in the 1970s and burnished it in the 1990s, and business gurus, entrepreneurs, and the tech media enshrined it as one of the guiding lights of the new economy.
