Selling the Conceptual and Computational Value of Esri’s ArcGIS Platform
At a time when industries are struggling to monetize the diversification of information flows in the digital economy, the transition from a "software as a service" model to a platform takes on crucial importance. Platforms are complex technological infrastructures that host and exchange content, but they are also sites of cultural interaction, consumer-driven business models, and powerful metaphors driving the digital economy. Situating Esri’s ArcGIS platform within the Facebook-era of platform development offers ways of understanding how one of the world’s largest GIS innovation companies and therefore other market dominators deploy popular platform thinking into its business and marketing strategies, while at the same time adoption technological standards that are conducive to both consumers and profit-seeking activities. Under examination are branded appeals to user value and strategies to create the optimal market for platform adoption by making data platform ready. Esri's long-term support of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international non-profit organization set to standardize geospatial data is one such social relation discussed. Considered are the democratic promises and practices that metaphorically hide the move towards "platform capitalism," where monopolies of the market structure the use and types of data being produced, distributed and consumed.