Super-Appification: Conglomeration in the Global Digital Economy

A new open access article by Fernando van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Michael Dieter, and Esther Weltevrede in: New Media & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231223419. Super-Appification: Conglomeration in the Global Digital Economy “In this study, we offer a distinct, global overview of ‘super apps’, enabling comparative analysis of their characteristics and origins worldwide, and paving the way… Read more Super-Appification: Conglomeration in the Global Digital Economy

A Plataformização da Web

My article on ‘The Platformization of the Web‘ (2015) has been translated into Portuguese! ‘A Plataformização da Web‘ was translated by Tiago Salgado and was published in the edited volume ‘Métodos Digitais: teoria‐prática‐crítica’, edited by Janna Joceli Omena. The book is available for free, open access, and a PDF and can be downloaded here. Helmond,… Read more A Plataformização da Web

Facebook’s evolution: development of a platform-as-infrastructure

We just published a new article (open access🔓): Helmond, Anne, David B. Nieborg, and Fernando N. van der Vlist. “Facebook’s Evolution: Development of a Platform-as-Infrastructure.” Internet Histories 3, no. 2 (April 3, 2019): 123–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667. In this article we present a methodological approach for tracing a platform’s evolution using archived sources from the Internet Archive… Read more Facebook’s evolution: development of a platform-as-infrastructure

The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready

My article on ‘The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready‘ has been published in the first issue of the new (open access) journal Social Media + Society. Abstract In this article, I inquire into Facebook’s development as a platform by situating it within the transformation of social network sites into social media… Read more The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready

The web as platform: Data flows in social media

On September 23, 2015 I will publicly defend my dissertation ‘The web as platform: Data flows in social media’ at the University of Amsterdam. Read the English summary/Nederlandse samenvatting or download the full dissertation as PDF (43Mb). Abstract This dissertation looks into the history of Web 2.0 as “the web as platform” (O’Reilly 2004) and… Read more The web as platform: Data flows in social media