This isn’t going to be a missive, just a thought. After my post last week on the Building Button blog, I received a number of notes summarized by this one.

This doesn’t break down silos, it just makes a connection between two still very silo’d apps.

This is a valid observation and is true. It’s also good that it’s true and it got me thinking about ‘how much siloing is just the right amount’?

At the foundation of silos is trust. Trust informs the content that you give one app and not another, the permissions that you will share and the autonomy of execution you’ll grant it. This trust is derived from the brand that created the app. The company. The people behind that company.

As long as companies make apps and we trust different companies to different extents, silos will exist to enforce those relative trust relationships. I’m glad that they do.