Value Tumor

Definition

Value tumors are just like cancerous tumors. They appear when there is unconstrained value creation within a closed ecosystem, bloating the system and bringing it to the brink of destruction of normal functionality unless restrained or removed. If a system gets clogged with data, spam, or useless, irrelevant information, it can become murky, and data cannot thrive or spread correctly.

In cancer, the duplication of the same useless cells again and again threatens the normal functionality of the ecosystem of the body. On Facebook, the development and implementation of multiple apps again and again drove the apps to a collective value of zero. But the apps continued to bloat and reproduce, each with names like ‘Install the Zombie Poke App”, the “Zombie Quiz Poke App”, and “Which Kind of Zombie Are You?” plagued the system and the system users. Each time a user logged in, the app requests inhibited normal user action in the system. It was a value tumor.

The gold rush of Facebook apps destroyed the value of the individual app, and until Facebook compressed together multiple App requests upon login.

The Apple store is a good example of a stable, curated ecosystem, but the amount of Apps available is still slightly tumorous.

WordPress takes a safe approach because it allows plugins to evolve outside the WordPress platform and then the software developers choose the best ones with the highest users ratings to invite into the formal plugin repository. Inviting only the clean, safe cells into the ecosystem raises the capabilities of the ecosystems while improving the health of the system. It is a prosthetic, externalizing approach similar to how humans deal with external technological functions.