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Evolution of Apps

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A couple years ago, Cory Doctorow observed a phenomenon in online products and platforms that he dubbed “enshittification”:

“Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

“I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”

From Amazon to Facebook to Google Search to TikTok, Cory mapped how online products and services tend to decline over time. And yet also how locked in people are to use them.

His colorful term struck a chord. The American Dialect Society selected “enshittification” as their word of the year in 2023. In a later Financial Times op-ed, he argued that “‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything.”

There are characteristics unique to online products and platforms (like network effects and switching costs), but some of this dynamic is a cautionary tale for any type of product innovation.

In 2007, I drew a cartoon on the “natural evolution of products” (posted below) that parodied the end result of continuous margin improvement and value capture. In the cartoon, a cereal brand starts using cheaper ingredients and packaging and eventually loses the box altogether. It then wonders why private label is gaining.

Here’s what I wrote at the time:

“Most product evolutions have to do with margin improvement rather than better performance. Consumers may not notice one round of cost-cuts, but over time, the reduced product quality can get really obvious. Why is it that cereal boxes never close properly after you open them once? My guess is that that little "advance" caused a 0.4 point margin gain at some point. But, oh how irritating to consumers.

“Of course, continuous margin improvement taken to an extreme gets hit by Darwinism too. Not from a pack of hyena. From a pack of private label – which actually seems to be getting better over time.”

Personal Milestones

A few days ago, I celebrated 25 years of sobriety. This upcoming October will mark 25 years of cartooning (at my business school newspaper). Those two personal milestones are indelibly connected. In many ways, I see my cartooning journey as one of the recovery gifts in my life.

I share these twin milestones because it would feel weird not to. I first started emailing this cartoon as a type of personal journal. And while I once felt shame around the topic, I’ve gotten more comfortable being open in my recovery over time. I’ve learned that sobriety is not antithetical to a creative life.

I want to share my thanks to all of you for following and supporting my cartooning over the years, whether you were one of my business school classmates when I first started drawing cartoons 25 years ago or just started reading my work recently. I’m deeply grateful.

Cartoon From The Archives

And here’s that cartoon I drew in 2007 that parallels my cartoon this week:

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Thank you for all of your support (and cartoon material)!

-Tom

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About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of me, Tom Fishburne. I first started drawing cartoons as a student in the Harvard Business School newspaper (not quite as well-known for humor as the Lampoon) and later started this newsletter from a General Mills cubicle in 2002. The cartoons have followed my career ever since. I poke fun at the ever-changing world of marketing and business because I believe that laughing at ourselves can help us do our best work.