This article has examined two theoretical approaches relevant to the study of new media forms: infrastructure studies and platform studies. The constructs they address share certain notable properties, including embeddedness, a degree of invisibility, extensibility, and broad coverage. While in this manner the two theories are “joined at the hip,” they are simultaneously “genetically different,” emerging from different disciplinary con-texts, traditionally focusing on different objects of investigation, and emphasizing different facets of their objects of study.