We should be looking at bringing innovation at the fundamentals rather then promoting our crappy MEGA applications.

expanded commentary “Successful Developer Platforms Have 3 Things: Features, Users, Money” is now a separate post on my own blog.

it’s arguable there are many other platform issues & requirements — security, scalability, standards, user authentication & support, etc. however these 3 primary aspects are what make platforms tick.

sometimes platforms can be successful if only 1 or 2 of the items above are working, altho if you want a dominant platform it’s helpful to have all 3.

Facebook has done an excellent job with the first 2, altho because their distribution incentives were creating user experience backlash, they had to dial back distribution. Also, until FB has payments in place, and has setup aligned monetization with their developer community, they are likely to be reluctant to really open the floodgates on distribution. If/when they have payments rolled out, expect them to spin up distribution again, probably through 3rd-party news feed stories.

MSFT is far from having a functional web platform, primarily because they have not figured out a web distribution story for 3rd parties. while they have tremendous reach via Windows and the Web, they have not translated that into consumer internet platform distribution opportunities. they also do not have a payments story (good reason to buy eBay/PayPal or Amazon, but don’t hold your breath). Still, given Microsoft’s historical dominance & belief in platforms & developers, i’d expect them to get there eventually… but it may take years.

Google’s “platform” to date has primarily been search (& indirectly SEO/SEM). However, while they are a juggernaut in search, their platform efforts to date have been lacking, tho promising for the future. OpenSocial has a long way to go, AppEngine is still fairly new, but if Google ever *does* open up properties like YouTube and Gmail and the main search platform to developers, then the sky’s the limit. Certainly Google has no lack of distribution, but again like MSFT it’s mostly direct, not on behalf of 3rd-party developers.

MySpace does seem to be following cautiously in Facebook’s footsteps, and given their existing footprint in music & entertainment (not to mention their already significant spam issues with user communication), it seems appropriate for them to move slowly. But they have shown progress over time, and if/when they implement payments they will likely attract a good deal of developer attention (and in fact, since FB dialed down distribution, MySpace has already drawn some of that audience in).

not mentioned: Yahoo, LinkedIn, SalesForce, Hi5, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut, other international players.

As long as there is this factionalism of “Web 2.0 platforms” there will never be a true Web 2.0 Ideology.

A social network can only have a platform if you have Web 2.0 myopia and believe that everything must be social to gain any market traction. Even if you believe that, it’s still quite a leap to believe that Facebook’s interface is good enough to be the center of every social web app.

Bottom line. Facebook is impressive. Their platform is easy to use and provides a ton of benefits. However any company tying their fortune exclusively to Facebook are just throwing the dice. It’s like some South American countries pegging their currency to the dollar. This brought them lots of immediate benefits like stopping inflation, but at what cost? They basically handed over the keys to their economy to someone who doesn’t even know they exist.

As much as Schrage wants to trumpet Facebook as a magic flute for traffic and engagement, he conveniently ignores two things. First, the population of people who hate facebook and will never get on it for any number of reasons from privacy to fad nausea. Second, the automatic “cheapness” brand that any facebook application inherits simply by virtue of using the same API as thousands and thousands of garbage apps over the past year.

The facebook goldrush is over. The best strategy is to build a real web application that you have control over, and then also build tight integration to Facebook where it makes sense. That way you can capture the upside of the Facebook platform without the unconscionable risk of throwing all your eggs in that basket for a temporary boost in developer productivity.

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

Be sure to ask for a prenup before making any commitments to any of these folk.

a platform boils down to your channel, stage, domain name, presence, location and software on the net. its a person or business communications social broadcast station. the quality will be gauged by a combination of where you broadcast from (domain) and what software tools you use to allow this exchange of communication to occur.

businesses and consumers will always pursue social broadcast location platforms that are the most used and vertical to there content. these niche vertical channels have yet to be developed in a strategic multichannel uniform resource manner. who ever does this first just might be on to something.

StrategyLocator.com- planned success