Platforms in the digital world

It is with regard to the digital world, however, that the term is mostly discussed today. For the past few years online digital platforms have caught the public eye, be these private (i.e. belonging to individuals) or public (i.e. belonging to governments). Online platforms today are digital-born informational infrastructures that offer certain functionalities. Initially their offering was social, meaning that they offered interaction opportunities among individuals in the digital world (‘online social networks’) in the form of a digital agora or forum. It was not long before financial opportunities were added to their functionality (transforming the agora into a market). Today, online platforms are enclosed communities, ‘gated gardens’ or informational islands in the ocean of the digital world (admittedly, with each one serving only a single or a few purposes), where individuals may participate, usually for free, within an entirely new, and until recently unheard-of, business model, wherein value (and strength) lies in user numbers and not (directly, at least) in transactions (with profit made indirectly, by selling the details of these individuals’ use of the platform to advertisers).

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