
74 ◾ Web 2.0 and Beyond: Principles and Technologies
large initial investments in infrastructure. e ‘get big fast’ motto reected the dot-com
plan to operate at a sustained net loss in order to establish a brand, dominate a market and
see o competitors so that they could charge protable rates for their services later on.
It was a persuasive argument and such was the scale of its power that it drove stock mar-
kets around the world to unrealistically high valuations (Kettell 2002). However, even now,
long aer the dot-com boom and bust, the idea that there are special eects at work on the
Internet driven by the scale and topology
*
of ...