Michael Meiser proposes that a network effect is responsible for proprietary services being replaced by open services.

The network effect is the reason why AOL died and why closed and inoperable networks and markets fail.

The value of a service scales with the number of possible recipients. Open standards are helpful to promote interoperability. But I don’t see why an exponential growth in the number of available services should necessarily cause lead to a growth of the overall market. People don’t buy more just becasue more is available. I would rather guess that people get more selective in their media consumption but the overall size of the market stays the same.