Talk:Closed platform

adding link to newspaper interview
could someone please add the link to http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin and reference/footnote it to the mention of Facebook being a walled garden in the article. dont know how to do this, thanks. Ryu (talk) 14:36, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

iTunes and iPod
I added the bit about iTunes and iPod, I hope nobody minds.. I know Wikipedia is about saying things in good faith but how can you say something positive about a walled garden? Another example of a walled garden is Sprint's Cellphone WAP service, where developers were only allowed to debug their WAP sites through Sprint Cellphones (paying with their own purchased minutes). Sprint could have offered a cellphone emulator, but didn't. I was at the NYSIA panel about the future of Cellphone services in New York, and witnessed a Sales representative of Sprint giving a 20 question quiz delivered as a sales pitch and subsequently boo'd off stage after This and telling the developers that there was no developer's kit for the cellphones, that everyone would have to work through the service. The Walled Garden reference should point back to what a walled garden is - a garden with high walls that keep people in from getting out and people outside from getting in. This is why I referenced this term as a method of creating a monopoly or a way to secure a system or environment (like with a firewall). In good faith you could see it as a process that businesses use to cash in on a special service, like MTV offers to advertisers selling viewers of MTV as a valuable commodity. MTV in this sense is a walled garden, as are every Television station. In a sense, Patents and Copyrights can be used to protect artists and inventors from infringement, but major corporations hold patents and copyrights of their employees to keep the competitors out.. It's this exclusivity that attracts investors, which is the primary reason technologies are patented. The methods that businesses use to corner a market are too numerous to mention, but the process is much the same.. The Walled Garden approach is just one of the many methods.. --Rofthorax 05:56, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think iTunes/iPod is a walled garden. This is a popular misconception. Perhaps it's more true to say the iTunes Music Store creates this environment, but iTunes can just as easily be used with MP3 files or anything else a user rips off a CD in MP3 or AAC unprotected format. These MP3 files can also be used with other players. And iTunes functions just as well as a computer player, it's not just for an iPod. Perhaps an update to more accurately reflect that the only walled thing is the store and its relationship with the iPod.

Small change: "A walled garden, with regards to media content" changed to "with regard to..." It's non-standard to use "in/with regards to" but you can say, "As regards your loan application...." Amiwikij (talk) 16:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

No sources in list of walled gardens
The list of "Walled Gardens" has no sources at all. Does anyone know of any notable people claiming that all these technologies are "walled gardens"? David Delony (talk) 00:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Origin
While the term might have been popularized by Engadget podcast, et al., I think it was a trade term that was used (even if not among popular culture) before Engadget podcast started. And the article mentions that its history might go back a thousand years. So it would probably be better to tone down the Engadget references a bit.

Also, per the "what good can you say?"... A few businesses at least have thought walled gardens might be a good idea, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. In terms of any possible benefit to consumers... maybe it might be remotely conceivable that customers's telecom service would be lower priced because of the exclusivity agreements? (eg. similar to the Preferred provider organization rationale). I don't know... --Interiot 08:21, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I cannot in any claim credit for having popularized this term, it's been around in the tech world for years and most definitely predates any usage on the Engadget Podcast.PeterRojas 04:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Battle.net 2.0
With the introduction of network DRM beginning with World of Warcraft, and being forced to use network DRM with Starcraft 2 (battle.net not LAN) would Battle.net 2.0 be considered a walled garden? --Thespam 22:51, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Walled gardens only in Wikis?
The concept of "walled gardens" and "orphan pages" in regards to information resources, shouldn't only be attributed to wikis, articles, or Wikipedia. Isn't this concept a common pitfall of websites in general that are not made to be navigable, especially those that rely on searches too much? I've seen many websites that exhibit these pitfalls. I think this should be generalized to talk about "walled gardens" and "orphan pages" in regards to best practices on the Web in general. Is there any reliable literature on this topic outside of Wikipedia? --71.193.24.251 (talk) 00:49, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Is Facebook Really a 'Walled Garden'?
Should Facebook still be included as an example of a 'walled garden'? Content providers can chose whether to make their content open to all or not, rather than the platform provider. If Facebook is a 'walled garden' then so is an Intranet - and I don't think this is how the term is perceived. Rather a 'walled garden is defined by the platform provider, surely?

Note there are clearly issues about privacy related to Facebook, but this needs to be decoupled from its misplaced (IMO) characterisation as a walled garden.

I propose deleted Facebook from the list of examples. I'd welcome comments before I do this. Note having read the article again I would also question the definition: "More generally, a "walled garden" refers to a closed or exclusive set of information services provided for users." I suggest replacing this with:

"More generally, a "walled garden" refers to a closed or exclusive set of information services which the platform provider restricts in order to gain competitive advantage".

I think this acknowledges the negative connotations of the term whilst excluding uses in which content providers explicitly chopse to restrict access to content. lisbk (talk) 16:00, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Au contraire, Facebook is the paradigmatic walled garden, together with Apple; and that's not directly related to privacy but for the fact that privacy concerns are caused by Facebook being a walled garden. The problem is not that content is not published to the internet in general (although sometimes the term is used with that meaning); it's that its users couldn't get it out of the system if they wanted.
 * For an information provider, being walled garden means at first that it places restrictions in interoperability because information can't be easily get out of the system, since it doesn't provide an open export format; and second, the system operator reserves the right to decide which services can their clients build on it, and to ban anything they don'like (which is precisely the definition you suggest). AFAIK Facebook exhibits both these properties. Diego (talk) 17:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. There are ways of exporting content from Facebook, including those provided by Facebook and by third parties (eg Facebookexport). However surely this is also true to Twitter - which has blocked third parties from exporting structured content (e.g. they instructed TwapperKeeper to remove the XML/Excel export recently). If you're saying that the walled garden aspect isn't to do with the access control (which I agree) but with the lack of ability to export appropriate structured content, the article should provide additional examples. Note I'm happy to discuss this here (and elsewhere) in order to seek consensus).

Note in light of your comments would you agree with the following proposed definition:

"More generally, a "walled garden" refers to a closed or exclusive set of information services which the platform provider restricts access to creation, viewing or export of content, in order to gain competitive advantage".

^ Communist fallacy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.57.174.90 (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

lisbk (talk)

Kindle
Whoever says the Kindle is a walled garden device has never used one. Here's how you use a kindle: Step One: plug it into your computer. Step Two: transfer text files from computer to Kindle. Step Three: conveniently read text files on a pocket-sized device with an ergonomic screen. The text files could be absolutely anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.28.91.176 (talk) 22:18, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

--KINDLE SUCKS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14C:4183:51F:D845:19B9:7634:105B (talk) 17:56, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Walled garden in media
Walled garden in media is different than closed platform. A closed platform is about technological lock ins. A horticultural walled garden is about creating the conditions for particular plants to thrive, the media one is about creating conditions for particular ideas to thrive. There are walled gardens of fraudulent web pages linked to each other to give the appearance of legitimacy (e.g. the product's web page links to fake trade magazine web page and fake blogs by happy customers, dig in and you'll see a common parent company or whatever). A discussion about walled garden in media can include things like 'search bubbles' and the Facebook 'fake news' scandal of 2016.

I think the media concept could be merged with the short horticultural page and 'walled garden media' could redirect there, they deal with fundamentally the same ideas: blocking something out, encouraging something within. Aach (talk) 18:13, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

AOL example is off base.
While AOL may be the best example of a Walled Garden that has ever existed, the example seems to be way off base.

When people were just learning about the internet, millions of people joined AOL and thought that because they were "online" they were on the internet, but they were not. In fact they were on AOL's website which was a rich Walled Garden that provided a wide variety of services. They were able to access that walled garden via either dial-up modem or an actual real ISP. At the time it was common for people to receive two or three free AOL CDs in the mail every week so it required no thought and no knowledge to get the ball rolling. Loosely speaking, AOL users were kind of the butt of the joke among "real internet" users, which is largely what caused the quick collapse of AOL membership. There were no proud exAOL users.

The beautifully tended AOL Walled Garden, was an online service provider (OSP), and for example, was an email provider, a news provider, an entertainment provider (music, movies, porn), health information, a BBS service, and social media with active discussion groups and so forth. ...Anything anybody could want!

Similar to Google Gmail, their email was not true email when emailing somebody within the Walled Garden. For example when a Gmail user "emails" another Gmail user, one is simply calling up a Google website and depositing your message there, —while the one receiving that Gmail calls up the same website to pick up that Gmail. Same-same with AOL.

The article says that AOL preferentially offered sponsored content to users, and CBS paid to provide sports content, ABC paid to provide news, etc, and that this was all highly profitable may be true, but that is talking about something else. While the terms: Walled Garden, and Proprietary, Anti-competitive, and Monopoly are often interrelated, they are not synonyms. --Doug Bashford 2607:FB91:7905:9C86:D801:40FF:FE2B:D43B (talk) 02:27, 16 December 2021 (UTC)