

Platforms are for Suckers: Why you shouldn't build your business on one. - dmitri1981
http://spencerfry.com/platforms-are-for-suckers

======
raganwald
I like everything about the post except for the word "platform." That is an
overly broad word that does mean web browsers and the Internet itself and
electricity. I prefer the phrase _Proprietary Platform_ , because the issue is
one of control.

If a single vendor gains control of the "market" for web browsers, as
Microsoft did for a while, you are at their mercy. If there are multiple,
competing web browsers and control of the APIs (e.g. HTML, CSS, JS) is
decentralized, you are at the mercy of the whims of the marketplace, but no
one person can wake up in the morning and decide to shut you out.

The concerns raised in this post are isomorphic to Apple's concerns about
Flash. They don't mind developers using web standards to develop apps because
no one vendor controls HTML, CSS, and JS. If developers write their apps in
HTML, JS, and CSS, Adobe cannot flip a switch overnight and break every app on
iPhone because their proprietary tools no longer emit a flavour of JS that
runs on iPhone without errors.

So...

Proprietary Platforms are for Suckers.

~~~
WiseWeasel
I'd say the true target of this criticism is _content-aware_ platforms, as
opposed to _content-neutral_ platforms, which I believe are what people often
mean when they talk about "closed" and "open" platforms. The author favorably
mentions targeting Windows and Mac OS, which certainly _are_ proprietary, but
they do not restrict the user of any content, essentially dumb pipes from
hardware to content; these content-neutral platforms would be OK to build a
business on. Platforms mentioned as bad were the iPhone, Twitter and Facebook,
platforms where the vendor can and does restrict their users' access to
content via arbitrary changes to their usage licenses, and such content-aware
platforms are shaky grounds to build a business on.

~~~
raganwald
Well, MacOS and Windows may be "content-neutral" in a certain sense but
historically both vendors have gone into competition with developers... So
from my perspective "proprietary" means sleeping with an 800lb. gorilla, and
all we are debating is whether the gorilla wants to eat you or simply rolled
over in their sleep and crushed you by accident.

<http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/>

~~~
metachor
The lesson I took away from Panic's Audion story is that they got gridlocked
while trying to play two potential buyers (AOL and Apple), and Apple ended up
moving forward with a less encumbered competitor. Please correct me if I am
wrong, but it sounds like Panic _wanted_ to get eaten by an 800lb. gorilla.

~~~
raganwald
Oh? I think they wanted to get rich, but not to sell out:

 _In fact, I'd say that almost 5 minutes after the meeting Steve and I knew in
our hearts that it wasn't time — that we didn't want to join Apple (yet). We
maybe went through the motions of "deciding" on the flight back home, but I
think we knew the truth. And the truth went something like this:_

 _"This is our only chance to do Panic. We don't have kids, we're not married,
we don't have huge obligations. We didn't invest our life savings into it,
just a few hundred dollars. We don't even have life savings. We probably won't
get this opportunity again in our lifetime — the full chance to take a
complete risk, to experiment, quit our day jobs, start a business that
certainly may fail, put our hearts into the soul of it, and try to make it fly
— making the best possible Macintosh software we can without the threat of
mortgages or the cost of braces or kids wondering why we're never home. And
while there may be a time in our life where we crave some stability, or there
may be a time in our life when things don't work out with Panic and we return
to be a player in a larger, awesome team like Apple, that time is certainly
not now. Panic's time is."_

------
extension
I only write programs in my own custom programming language that run on my own
in-house operating system. It only runs on computers that I design and
manufacture myself. All the components are specially fabricated by me out of
raw materials that are either synthesized in my lab or mined from my backyard.
To spare you from the tyranny of the power company, it runs entirely off solar
power, but it also comes with an emergency fusion reactor since the sun can
just decide to go supernova any time it wants.

~~~
mitchellhislop
Do you have any safeguards in place incase atoms decide not to produce energy
when fused.

If not, I have no trust in your platform

------
webwright
Google is certainly the biggest platform that people build on. How many
businesses would die if their business had a catastrophic SEO failure
tomorrow?

The point of platforms is that they make things easier, which is something
that most businesses desperately need. You just have make sure that you
understand the risks-- but they are oftentimes worth it. Zynga would never
have built what they've built without Facebook. Yelp would be a tiny fraction
of what it is without Google. Quickbooks would have a rough time without
Windows.

That said, picking a really early platform has more risks (read: Twitter).
Picking a platform run by a company that isn't really experienced being a
platform (your Ventrilo example and, again, Twitter) has more risks.

But punting platforms as a concept is just dumb. 85% of venture-backed
startups are dead in 3 years. More than that, likely, in the bootstrapped
world. You need every advantage you can get.

~~~
joshu
Windows?

~~~
shadowsun7
Spolsky has a good essay on that (and how they've lost):
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html>

tl;dr version: Windows is a platform nobody wants to develop for. Windows
developers have moved to the web (or to other platforms eg: Mac). The rest of
the article justifies these two assertions.

------
patio11
I largely agree with the thesis, but can't seem to get my head around
marketing on the open Internet without being tied body and soul to the Google
platform.

~~~
percept
Agreed. If anybody has some good ideas/links about this, please share.

~~~
stcredzero
Why are Bing and Yahoo not viable alternatives? Is it because your competition
will out-market you using the better Google platform?

~~~
patio11
_Why are Bing and Yahoo not viable alternatives?_

Mostly because they have decisively lost the search market in the United
States. I deal with one of the most non-technical niches imaginable, and
Google gives me 10x the traffic that Bing does. (It is an interesting question
of whether this is solely because Google is crushing Bing in market share, or
if it is a reflection of adaptation of my business to meet Google's demands.
That is largely academic, though. Its a factor of freaking ten.

Bing and Yahoo could both go dark tomorrow permanently and I might not even
notice. The last time Google went dark, for 45 minutes, I started fielding
customer support queries about how I "broke the Internet". And while that is
amusing phrasing, I don't think it is false. Google _is_ navigation on the
open Internet. (Insert obligatory disclaimer: for English speaking Americans.
It is a bit different in Japan. It is even more lopsided in the UK in Google's
favor.)

Edit to add: Do not get me started on their PPC services. Its like Bill Gates
said "We want this to have the technical chops of Google and the dedication to
service of a convent!" and the memo got horribly, horribly misread.

~~~
stcredzero
Does Microsoft know that Bing lost? (Maybe from their POV, it's just waiting
in the wings.)

------
gyardley
Amen. My startup's too dependent on a single platform right now, and we're
being burnt by it.

What platforms _are_ for is speedy cash. The access you'll get to large
numbers of people is a great help. Just keep your efforts cheap and dirty and
put the money in your pocket as soon as you get it.

~~~
pacemkr
I could not agree more.

I am also dependent on a single platform and am acutely aware of the fact that
this is not a good long term (6 mo +) investment of my time. However, building
for a popular platform is a good way to make some quick cash without having to
worry about anything but the quality of your product (ie. getting discovered,
marketing, payment processing, etc.)

~~~
stcredzero
Is a meta-platform possible? Leaving 3.3.1 aside, what about a company acting
as a clearinghouse that takes care of all of the platform issues for you,
submits your app, markets it, takes care of payment.

Perhaps this is possible with Javascript web apps for mobile devices?

------
mattmaroon
This is silly. What was it Paul Buchheit called advice? Limited life
experience + overgeneralization or something like that? That's exactly what
this is.

Platforms have their positives and negatives. What you should do depends on
the unique combination of your goals and market forces. Broad, sweeping
generalizations like this are sad because they miss the real point, which is
that you should carefully consider potential future ramifications of building
on a platform. Not that you shouldn't do it, but that you need to give serious
thought about what success might mean.

------
BerislavLopac
Actually, the problem is not in _platforms_ , but in _proprietary_ platforms.
As another commenter stated, it's turtles all the way down, but most of those
turtles are either non-proprietary (HTML, Javascript, PHP, Apache, IBM
architecture) or irrelevant to the application (it doesn't matter whether a
Web application runs on Linux, Windows or MacOS).

You always build on a stack of platforms, but the only one that matters is the
one directly underneath your application. If it is proprietary, and/or you
have no influence on the way it works, you might get into a trouble as
described by Spencer.

------
maxklein
There are some people who work well within platforms and some who work well
outside of platforms. A platform, in many ways, levels the playing fields. It
gives a bigger chance to us 'normals'.

See, those who do well outside of platforms are those funny, smart people that
are always the center of attraction. They somehow have this magical ability to
get people to gather around them - they become they center of attention
wherever they go.

Those who do well within the platforms are the people who are willing to spend
time studying the quirks of the platforms, and optimizing for it. Within a
platform, the popular people who are usually the center of attention just by
the force of their personality can get overshadowed by the meticulous
researcher dude.

So often, you'll find that people who are already popular and famous say to
work outside of the platform. Those who know they are not the type of person
to draw people to themselves by magic will prefer to work within a platform.

------
blizkreeg
I use Facebook Connect as the only way to register in my new venture site. I
realize it is far less than ideal, however, we're just starting out and FB
connect provides a really good way of getting genuine people and traffic. It
cuts out spam by the ton and there is lesser resistance to 'sign up'.

I agree though. Building on top of platforms is one way of being bitten in the
derriere at some point.

------
tjmaxal
This may seem like an oversimplification but like the article says all web
apps are built on browsers and all browsers are built on an OS and all OSes
are built on hardware, all hardware is built on a chip set etc, etc, etc, till
you get down to the fact that all of it runs on electricity.

It seems like it's turtles all the way down.

~~~
patio11
That is an oversimplification, in important respects. There are multiple
competing options for most of those platforms, responsibility for them is
diffuse, and change happens very gradually.

I mean, yes, technically speaking, I am dependent on electricity. But that
doesn't mean there is a $8 an hour representative at the power company whose
job is to shut down 24 businesses today to preserve the power company's vision
for what proper use of electricity looks like, and whose decision is beyond
repeal.

~~~
fierarul
> That is an oversimplification, in important respects. There are multiple
> competing options for most of those platforms, responsibility for them is
> diffuse, and change happens very gradually.

Also, at some point it's not platform, it's infrastructure. You could assume
that your business will use credit cards and online payment since this is part
of the infrastructure but when you are using the payment API of company
MegaCorp to have those payments, you might get burned with their particular
Platform.

> I mean, yes, technically speaking, I am dependent on electricity. But that
> doesn't mean there is a $8 an hour representative at the power company whose
> job is to shut down 24 businesses today to preserve the power company's
> vision for what proper use of electricity looks like, and whose decision is
> beyond repeal.

This isn't a good comparison. The thing is the electricity provider is much
more regulated by laws, more stable and slower in changes compared to some
other companies. Also -- it's infrastructure.

Technically, some "power company vision" is kept since you can't actually put
any two wires to make a gizmo and sell it on the market as a product.

Another interesting factoid: home users have a limit on how much electricity
you can consume. After a given limit you have to ask special permit from the
electricity provider and probably pay extra. The trick is all these things are
stipulated somewhere and public.

------
ebiester
If I could only be as great a sucker as Zynga...

That said, it makes more sense, to me, to suggest that each business perform a
cost/benefit analysis for every platform they use, and quantify risks.

1\. For some business categories, such as games, you will be on a platform.
Perform cost/benefit analysis for your market. Does flash make sense? Does
ActiveX? What are your risks, and what are your benefits? (Some would suggest
the game market itself is for suckers.)

2\. Many platforms, such as Facebook, are glorified advertizing and lead
generation. Do not create for these platforms, but rather advertize through
it. The best example to me is PopCap Games, which directs people to their
casual games through their flash games.

3\. The further you wish to push the envelope, the more risk a platform
entails. Porn? Be as independent as possible. Corporate apps? .NET is not your
worry point.

------
houseabsolute
> The granddaddy of all reasons, and the only one strong enough in itself to
> refute any contrary opinion . . .

Setting himself up for failure by claiming that the coming point brooks no
rational argument . . .

> is that at any time Twitter, Facebook, etc., can make any change to their
> Terms of Service that their heart desires, leaving you high and dry.

And fails. Although this is a reason to be wary of platforms, sometimes to
have a business at all you have to build it under the dominant platform. This
may not be true of your level of risk tolerance, but for some people a risky
business is better than no business at all. I'm sure that Zynga's owners feel
this way after their recent partnership agreement with Facebook.

------
watmough
Aside from the admitted fail in building their own software, there's some good
points in this article.

In the world outside software, avoiding platforms can be equally hard. If you
sell lawnmowers, cheap meat, car parts, then you may depend on respectively
WalMart, McDonalds, GM, which are all platforms in their own way.

I wonder if there will be 'leakage' from iPhone software towards Mac software
as the screws tighten somewhat on the App store.

------
motters
It's like building a house of cards. The most solid platforms are open
standards, like HTML. Other platforms may be shakier, especially if they're
controlled by a single individual or a single company who can change their
mind at any time. If you build your business around open standards you're less
likely to suffer from changes in terms of service of "platform providers".

------
Groxx
See also: Platforms are for Suckers: Why you should build one, and sucker
suckers into building their business on one.

------
davidedicillo
Building on platforms isn't a problem. It's actually pretty cool being able to
use all these wonderful APIs. The problems start when your business is
depending on one of them. If what you offer is a product that work on top of
10 platforms, it wouldn't be a big deal if one of them will shut you donw.

------
moolave
I give credit to the writer as an entrepreneur, but one thing he missed for
sure is: platforms were made for an adaptable market. Maybe it was just the
nature of their operation that didn't fit into the equation

------
Raphael
Commercial platforms are for suckers. Open platforms are huge wins.

~~~
stakent
Can we have examples of open platforms, please?

~~~
jauer
So far as easy to deploy webstack platforms go, Joyent's SmartPlatform seems
to be open: <http://www.joyent.com/technology/smartplatform/> Code on github
to run your own instance: <http://github.com/joyent/smart-platform/>

------
clark-kent
This is why I stay away from Google's App Engine. I don't get why Google keeps
it closed source. At least with EC2 I'm only renting server hardware.

------
billpaetzke
How about Amazon S3/EC2 Services?

Amazon seems pretty solid, stable, and flexible to me. And many startups are
using them to scale.

~~~
Psyonic
A good test is to ask yourself how hard it would be to switch to another
provider. If it'd be very difficult and/or expensive, you should make sure
that's a situation you're comfortable being in.

------
JMiao
author's experience is creating an app around a "platform" developed by one
person. you still have to pick the right platform to build for, you know.

------
steveklabnik
As one of those people chiding you, I see now why you make the distinction
between those two kinds of platforms.

I do think you have a legitimate point, but I'm not sure how to fix this
problem. There's so much potential in web platforms...

~~~
junklight
I don't think you can fix it. You take risks all along the continuum - if you
are standalone you have more control but you need to get user buy in. If you
go to a busy popular platform then you risk falling into the sinking sands
caused by someone elses control.

in both cases people will fail from things out with their control - its just
easier to point at if its someone else changing the rules. (and easier to
grumble about)

edit: like the guy above says - you need to tailor your risk. On someone
else's platform - look for quick rewards and work on the basis its only a
matter of time until it goes away

------
TotlolRon
"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." --
Sir Isaac Newton

~~~
raganwald
One of the suggestions is that this was intended as an insult to a rival,
Hooke, who was short and hunchbacked. Although popular, this suggestion has
been disputed:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Fame>

------
henning
Ventrilo's popularity is a priori evidence of how fucking dumb gamers are.

~~~
stcredzero
Language! But that said, the popularity of MMOs, with game dynamics all too
similar to slot machines and resort casinos isn't a good sign. (I say this as
a former Eve Online addict.)

