If social media were Game of Thrones [infographic]

Here’s a little Friday fun for our Game of Thrones fans.  (Did you watch this week’s episode?  Have you ever been so angry at your television?  I’ve never been so hooked on and yet so terrified to watch a series.  Especially one so gory.  Ever.  That is some brilliant writing.)  Anyways, where were we?  Oh, yes.  For those of you that are into Game of Thrones, the folks at Hootsuite put together a fun infographic showing how all of the houses (or social media sites) interact and team up to make passage to other sites difficult.  It is a great graphic depiction of how easy it is for one site to team up with another to cut a rival off at the knees.  When sites block access to other sites, they’re not doing it to protect their users, or make the user experience more enriching.  In fact, many are finding the social experiences on some sites to be less and less social as time goes on.  So why are they doing it?

This may help explain: