

Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both - netvarun
http://ceklog.kindel.com/2011/08/24/be-either-an-app-or-a-platform-not-both/

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6ren
Good advice (if you want someone to buy, give them some value), but absolutes
always... have exceptions. _"Developer Tools Are Not Platforms"_ seems
disingenuous, an ad hoc addendum. What's the distinction? Earlier there's
reference to a platform as a "developer/3rd party platform", which suggests
it's _for_ developers - how is that not a dev tool?

Perhaps what he's getting at is that you need to provide value to the
customer, or they won't buy. You can't rely on a 3rd party developer to do it
for you, for no reason. But they might if you provide value to them. Which
makes them the customer (and you a dev tools provider). If this is what he
means, I don't see it as fatal to "building a platform". It just means that if
you want to build a platform for 3rd party users, you'd better offer them some
value in order to attract them. e.g. access to customers, data, IP, publicity,
credibility, other resource, some cool proprietary technology, or even ease of
development (dev tool). It had better be a real benefit that they couldn't
easily (or better) do themselves.

Seems he's railing against some misconception that I haven't heard of, and my
lack of that context and assumptions creates holes in his for me.

BTW: how is the first example he gives - the first IBM PC - an app? A PC on
its own is useless. It might be bundled with some apps, but they aren't why
you bought it. (Hobbiest computers were different: they _were_ apps for people
who bought them to hack). Of course, the "IBM" made it an exception: instant
publicity, credibility, customers, ISVs, marketplace. But tellingly in favour
of his position is the iPhone: so _obviously_ a platform today, yet the
original iPhone _had no appstore_. You _couldn't_ put apps on it. It was sold
for the built-in functionality: a phone, web-browser etc.

There's an old-fashioned term summing this up: _killer-app_. It means an
application of a technology or platform that makes it worth buying. e.g. For
apple IIe, it was word processing and spreadsheets; for the Mac it was desktop
publishing. For game consoles, it's launch titles.

counter e.g. game consoles; eBay and Viacom (for 3rd parties not devs);
android; heroku (and other _P_ aaS)

