Today, I think there's perhaps a simpler and more powerful way to think strategically about platforms.
Let me advance a simplifying proposition: platforms are markets. The most useful way to think about platforms today is simply as markets.
Of course, I don't entirely agree with him, but a good position to start from.
3 comments:
When I read Umair's piece I immediately thought of you and in particular the distinction you have attributed to Umair that markets, networks and communities are not the same things; and the thought was that platforms indeed are distinct too. My thoughts get into a muddle about the distinctions, sorting those differences and keeping them straight seems the way out of the muddle. So I look forward to you pointing out where you don't agree with Umair.
Hi John,
That's a good question, because as I keep re-reading Umair, I find myself oscillating backwards and forwards between greater and lesser agreement.
I guess the real contention is just the one that you've highlighted ... markets vs. networks. In my view any of : market, network or community can be a "platform". A platform isn't another distinct species, which is one way I read Umair. Eg. when he says : "when they shift from platform logic to market logic."
Sometimes, though, I think he knows this; which is why he's saying a platform can *be* a market.
But I still think the "openness" he recognises is mainly a supreme virtue of "markets", but is not necessarily a supreme virtue of either "communities" or "networks". That's something he seems to downplay. But maybe merely by accident rather than policy.
The suggestion that the problem with Facebooks's Application market is "advertising" is intriguing. Once again, there's half of me which thinks that advertising is such a tired, corrupt, old-fashioned business model, that he's brilliantly identified the cause of Facebook's malaise.
There's another half that thinks : payment in money or attention? What's the difference? App. makers are still going to chase mass audiences with the lowest-common denominator products.
Of course, making a paid app. market on Facebook would certainly be interesting. And may support a tier of quality apps. that currently can't make it at the moment. So I think it's a great suggestion.
I'm also not nearly as pessimistic about the bad apps. as Umair. I suspect a sea of pointless little applications is actually healthy rather than a sign of something going wrong. It's rather like the way that big animals live (and could only live) in a soup of small micro-organisms. Bacteria aren't just an unnecessary, contingent nuisance in a big-animal world. They're part of the necessary life-support.
Similarly, perhaps all those zombies and vampires and boring video-sharing walls are a necessary part of Facebook ecology, maintaining multiple layers of weak-ties and continuous partial attention, which may be a necessary mulch for more interesting and important apps. to grow in.
Thanks for that. I would have waited for you to talk about it in your normal course of blogging.
In that vein of normal blogging, I always look forward to your post on netocracy.
And in your comments today the point about the ecosystem of multiple layers of weak ties is very smart.
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