This is a recent term that is used to talk broadly about many types of companies with network effects that scale by cultivating external networks and facilitating the means of connection, not the means of production. Those are important ideas. However, we feel the term conflates too many concepts to be very useful when trying to tease out the important elements of what make these businesses really work. We prefer to break out the 13 different network effects and the many attributes of networks. We also reserve the term "platform" for network effect businesses like MS OS, iOS, or the FB Platform product where other Incorporated entities are building their businesses on them.