Maximum geek alert. Here's Rebekah Cox, original designer of the News Feed pattern for Facebook and Quora, using the image of physical land ownership to explain the digital platform wars: 

Land ownership couldn't exist without violence. Violence to take the land and violence—or at least the threat of violence—to keep the land. Systems have been created to keep that violence to a minimum: courts, property lines, rules, regulations, police, lawyers, deeds, sales, etc. New laws are created to compensate for new abuses: height restrictions, offsets, building permits, etc. But where lawyers fail, sheriffs are there with guns for enforcement.

There is no digital land equivalent. Products like Facebook and Twitter are platforms and the foundation on which you build your parcel is your profile but for the most part it grows without harming others. Your gaining friends and followers and likes and retweets should not detract from other’s opportunity to do so. By and large, the ‘battles’ are between the major platforms themselves. Snapchat innovates, Facebook-owned Instagram clones. Actual violence is avoided entirely.