4 THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM Knitted together in the right way, the fragmented new media world gives us the sort of creative opportunity David Ogilvy could only have dreamed of. It’s a dazzling ecosystem of opportunity if – and not because – you are sceptical in swallowing its own well-crafted hype. What success means in this ecosystem deserves some forensic probing. Who’s doing really well, and who’s not? Who’s making money, and exactly how? It is strange, but in all the flood of journalistic commentary on the subject, it is impossible to find a simple, and systematic, set of comparisons to help answer these questions. Well, there’s one specially constructed on the following pages. There are two big and simple things one learns from doing an analysis like this: Seemingly invincible social platforms have quickly succumbed to fitter successors. Six Degrees had a short life, and barely made it to the start of the twenty-first century. Next, Myspace and Friendster appeared, and then moved aside for Facebook, while Xanga gave way to YouTube. Orkut, until recently the most popular network in parts of the world, has largely disappeared from sight. • For an advertiser, there’s no one-stop shop. Most of these media complement