
Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol - bckmn
http://www.andjosh.com/2015/02/15/using-open-protocols/
======
mangecoeur
Perhaps a bit naive - these companies that start by embracing open standards
then pull back from them are just pulling a classic bait-and-switch, with a
bit of freeriding off open-source efforts thrown in. They bootstrap their user
base and arrive to market quickly by using tools built by others. Then once
they grow and gain market and mind share, they can start closing themselves
off, walling the garden.

And it's just business - it's a logical step for a profit motivated
organisation. You're value is in your users and your brand. So you take steps
to lock in your users, prevent third parties from using your services with
through open protocols (which dilutes your brand). Nearly all the current crop
of (once-idealistic) companies are at it. It's really time to start learning
from history that you can't depend on private, for-profit companies to act in
the common good - because doing so spreads the value around, and a company
wants it all for itself.

~~~
amelius
Here's an idea: there should be a maximum number N of employees a company can
have. This enforces companies to think about the greater good, because if
you're in a company that is split because of size, you might end up in a
different company. Also, a maximum on the number of employees stimulates the
"modularity" of the market: large conglomerates with internal markets will not
be possible anymore.

I'm not sure of all the repercussions, but perhaps we can start with N at a
large value, and slowly (over several decades) decrease it, and see what
happens.

~~~
jackmaney
An interesting idea, but it would likely result in the creation of a crap ton
of (what in effect would be) umbrella companies.

"Google? No, I technically work for Search Ad Services by Google."

~~~
amelius
But think about it... Suddenly every company can have Search Ad Services as
good as Google's.

Also, if you don't like what company X is doing, you just need to find N
qualified people, and you can start your own X.

~~~
jackmaney
That's assuming that Search Ad Services by Google will have--or will be
allowed to have--clients other than Google. And that, of course, is the entire
point: to split a company up into what are technically smaller companies that,
in effect, are just part of the head company.

~~~
amelius
Of course a company cannot be selective about its customers in a way that is
anti competitive.

~~~
jackmaney
Ummm...yes. Yes, they can.

------
randomsearch
I think the question is - better for who?

Clearly for many businesses, walled gardens, avoiding "openness", works. That
might be because they use it to create an artificial moat to protect their
business (arguably LinkedIn here), or because it's the best way to serve their
customers (Steve Jobs' argument, not saying I agree).

For customers, if the best experience is gained through a native app, then a
native app makes sense from the company's point of view. This is why native
apps took off in the first place, right?

Just because you or I believe in open standards and information sharing
doesn't mean it's better from everyone's point of view.

~~~
Retric
As much as the tech world loves to hate Apple, walled gardens are a huge part
of why their stuff 'just works'.

Suppose you want an app to play videos. If your app uses a custom format no
problem. If you support an open standard, the file might not, it might require
more processing power than you have, it's probably for a different screen
resolution, it...

In the end tech people are willing to trade stuff breaking occasionally for
flexibility, but most people flip out when stuff breaks.

PS: I think you can break it down as do you want a VCR to show a movie to your
friends, or a VCR that gives you an excuse to tinker.

~~~
astazangasta
Nonsense. Why does Apple have their own plug format instead of supporting USB?
Is it somehow better? Easier? Blatantly not. This is just vendor lock in, the
opposite of the fundamental ethic of the Internet.

~~~
pixl97
> Is it somehow better?

Apple's magsafe and lighting adapter plugs are _far_ better than USB
connectors. They are reversible and don't have tabs to break off on the device
side.

~~~
gagege
Tabs?

~~~
pixl97
[http://cdn.ndtv.com/tech/images/gadgets/Samsung_Galaxy_S5_fl...](http://cdn.ndtv.com/tech/images/gadgets/Samsung_Galaxy_S5_flap2_ndtv.jpg)

If you look close at in the connector on this S5 you can see there are two
separate 'tabs' that are rather fragile if you are not careful removing and
inserting your power cable. I've seen these break on phones before.

[http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8554/DSC_1380.jpg](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8554/DSC_1380.jpg)

The iphone connector has no small fragile pieces like that.

------
freshyill
> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting
> was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface.

I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge
number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was
probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth
exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was getting a featurephone"
is complete bullshit.

Has anybody here ever even used Twitter via SMS? Desktop and mobile apps
_made_ Twitter. SMS was a niche thing at the very beginning.

I wouldn't even bother raising the issue if he weren't trying to premise his
bigger point on it.

So that gets to his bigger point, which I'm not so sure about. Yeah, I can
reply to Jira tickets from my email. But it's a huge pain. The replies end up
with a whole bunch of email crap jammed into them, and it makes it harder to
follow conversations. I usually edit other people's email responses to remove
that stuff. So yes, it _can_ be done. And maybe it's just Jira, but in this
case at least, it's a much degraded experience.

~~~
illicium
Don't forget about Twitter's API and liberal usage policy that made the
plethora of clients and mashups possible -- I think this accelerated their
growth more than anything.

Their API is not so "free" now -- you need to register your app, always
authenticate, and there's no public firehose access any more.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
This is a far better point. Twitter happened along in that magical time of
AJAX when everyone was willing to share their data because we all talked about
how everything should be free and open.

Then the social media companies realized that this was a gigantic mistake, and
started to seal everything up. How could they be expected to make their
billions when their services were so open that they were essentially becoming
abstracted protocols for third party apps? The opportunity to sell advertising
and personal data is far greater when what you have is closed.

I understand why they did it; I just hate that they did. It always felt like a
massive bait and switch and I'm betting that Facebook and Twitter aren't going
to be the last ones that do this.

------
dpark
I feel like I'm missing something. We should use open standards like WhatsApp,
who actually use a proprietary protocol that just seems familiar? We should
avoid creating custom technologies like Flipboard, who actually embraced the
open Canvas standard? Let's reminisce about SMS on Twitter in 2010 when
smartphones were exploding and SMS was likely no longer the primary mode of
interaction... This all makes no sense.

------
Someone1234
SMS isn't an open protocol. So using it as an example of "what to do" is
strange in and of itself.

This article falls flat because the author never defines what they mean by
"open." SMS is a walled garden, it is controlled by the cellular industry in
case the author missed that. Costs you actual cash money to use too (!) which
might be a detriment to many.

------
jowiar
I don't like the shot at Flipboard here. HTML was designed for marking up
(hypertext) documents. It's a perfectly fine language for marking up
documents. It's a terrible kludge for defining application user interfaces, as
anyone who has ever built such an application can attest.

What we're seeing now is a shift to JSON-over-HTTP from HTML-over-HTTP as the
protocol of choice for connecting the internet, along with a whole pile of
different tools for defining application user interfaces (partially because,
up to now, no decent standard exists).

~~~
vcarl
Not to mention that they open sourced their interface for rendering React on
canvas, which is opens the door for more (smaller) companies to do the same.
What they did is phenomenally friendly to the open source community.

~~~
spyc3r
Also Flipboard is no less accessible then it already was as a native
application. The problems with making an app rendered in canvas can be solved
(largely because they open sourced their work).

------
BinaryIdiot
This is far too naive. User Experience drives everything. If your open
protocol is the best thing since sliced bread but it's too complicated for the
audience who should be consuming it? It will die and an application with great
user experience will take its place.

While I love open protocols and will use them as much as possible, at the end
of the day I'm still going to do whatever it is that provides my users with
the best user experience.

~~~
liotier
Lack of open protocol implies that client choices will be essentially limited
to what the service provider offers. This is bad user experience.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> Lack of open protocol implies that client choices will be essentially
> limited to what the service provider offers. This is bad user experience.

You're conflating the inability to develop for a protocol / platform for user
experience. Having an open protocol can make a user experience better but it
certainly doesn't have to.

~~~
liotier
I understand your point - the proprietary applications offered might be so
vastly superior to any potential alternatives that would use an open protocol
as to make the whole idea irrelevant.

But that supposes that all user needs can be met that way, which in a
resource-constrained world cannot be true: the proprietary application
provider will inevitably have to prioritize some classes of users over others.
Those users whose needs are not within the functional scope of the application
are going to find their experience quite horrible.

Only open protocols guarantee the potential for diversity that can cover
provide all users with good experience - or with an experience at all...

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> But that supposes that all user needs can be met that way[...]

No, it doesn't. Giving the user a good user experience does not mean it's the
absolute best-end-all experience.

> the proprietary application provider will inevitably have to prioritize some
> classes of users over others. Those users whose needs are not within the
> functional scope of the application are going to find their experience quite
> horrible.

The problem you're outlining here completely applies to open source
communities, standard bodies and companies (it has nothing to do with open
versus proprietary protocols). Everyone has to prioritize things and certain
priorities will not meet the needs of all users. I would also argue that users
whose needs are not within the functional scope of an application...should
look for an application that meets their needs as best as possible. Not
everyone is going to have all of their needs met with anything.

------
matthewmacleod
I totally appreciate the point, and I think there's a certain amount of
validity to it. Open standards and interfaces make it better and easier to
consume data – in theory.

That said, there are complexities. Monetisation is the obvious one; if you
have an app or service that relies on advertising—Twitter is the obvious
example—then the first thing that you'll find is an app that strips your
advertising out.

It also seems quite reasonable that a company like Twitter is entitled to
payment by people who want to use the data they aggregate. Sure, they're not
the publisher, but they do provide the infrastructure. We could hypothesise
about replacing that with an open, peer-to-peer infrastructure, but nobody has
done so yet.

------
xyby
From the Flipboard page:

> You cannot build a 60fps scrolling list view with DOM.

I simply do not believe that. I have no problems scrolling around the
internet. And the examples they give (flipboard.com/@flipboard) give me no
clue about what their problem with the DOM is. I find it _really_ hard to
imagine you couldn't do that in the DOM.

I wonder what is going on over there.

~~~
archagon
You cannot build a <dynamic> 60fps scrolling list view <with custom
animations> with a DOM.

Can't complain; their results do look gorgeous.

~~~
xyby
I would love to see a minimal example of a "dynamic scrolling list view with
custom animations" that does not work smoothly on my old Nexus 4.

~~~
untog
As someone who spends almost every day working on mobile web stuff, I promise
you - doing anything involving custom animations on scroll is awful. Because
you have to hook into the onScroll JS event and change properties on the fly,
the effect is usually janky at best. Particularly on iOS < 8, because it
didn't fire onScroll events regularly.

------
aapierce
I dunno, Instagram did pretty well for itself, despite being an (iPhone
exclusive!) app at first. For a while, they didn't even have a web interface
for viewing images, much less posting them.

------
CmonDev
_"...Flipboard just announced their migration to full-canvas..."_

Ha-ha-ha, awesome!

So it's open, but you are not practically allowed to fix inconsistencies due
to compatibility (especially outside of turtle-speed committees) and you are
also not allowed to do things own way?

No, no. You have to use a document-oriented mark-up to create GUIs and for
business logic you have to use/compile to a legacy language flawed from the
day one which cannot be fixed!

"Open"? Really?

------
ottoflux
True - and hopefully you'll keep that up with your new site/app once
marketers, CFOs, and investors get involved, I think that's when things start
growing walls and controls. As soon as someone mentions "monetization,"
hopefully it's only explored as charging your users a reasonable rate for a
good service.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Pretty much any time someone mentions "monetization" they mean abandoning
"reasonable rate for a good service" and "tricking users into paying more for
subpar service" instead".

The whole talk about "monetizing" and stuff reminds me of 'dsirijus
comment[0], "Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable
from a scam."

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941)

------
antidaily
"When I built out..." Saw that coming.

------
untog
Your app might be better than an open protocol if the open protocol doesn't do
what you want it to. RSS is great, until you want to add a feature that RSS
doesn't include. And let's face it, if you tie your business to standards
ratified by standards bodies you're going to need funding for the next ten
years or however long it takes them to ratify something.

------
ChikkaChiChi
First:

"Open protocols power the web...RSS, SMS, plaintext-email, HTML5 - these are
the easiest, fastest ways to get users into your system."

Then: "Flipboard just announced their migration to full-canvas"

Unless we have different understandings of what HTML5 is, I think you just
invalidated your own point.

------
walterbell
The iOS 8 extension model could improve support for open standards. Some
active iOS apps already support open standards:

WebDAV: GoodReader, Notebooks (Alfons Schmid), OmniFocus, Textastic,
TouchDraw, Transmit (includes extension)

CalDAV: 2Do

Other recommendations?

------
kcole16
Flipboard addresses the accessibility issue in their article. While moving to
canvas limits it for now, at least they are making an effort to incorporate
it, which is more than can be said for most sites.

~~~
onion2k
They're saying " _Whooshy effects are more important than disabled people
accessing our app. We 'll let those people in when it doesn't impact our fancy
UI._" It could definitely be worse, because they could ignore accessibility
completely, but that doesn't make their approach good.

~~~
cwyers
> They're saying "Whooshy effects are more important than disabled people
> accessing our app."

It's a world of trade-offs. There are contexts where accessibility is obvious
more important than most other concerns -- the IRS's web site should obviously
be as accessible as possible because everybody needs to pay their taxes. On
the flip side of things, the point of Flipboard IS the UI. Flipboard is all
about aggregating other people's content and providing a different user
interface to it. What Flipboard is doing is it is taking limited resources and
trying to allocate them, and they're choosing to focus on improving the user
experience for the vast majority of their users. Is that the right choice? I
dunno. But I don't think condescendingly referring to their focus on user
experience as "whooshy effects" adds anything to the conversation.

------
bkurtz13
So we should never create anything new, then?

~~~
anonymfus
No. You just must build your new things in such ways that your competitors can
easily repeat them and your customers can easily migrate to your competitors.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Your competitors are going to "repeat" you and take your Customers anyway. If
lock-in is your value proposition then you have no value proposition. Using
open protocols allows your Customers to do interesting things with your
service that you never envisioned.

------
api
People don't pay for open protocols.

~~~
mkagenius
The aim should be to use protocols as a tool rather than direct source of
revenue.

~~~
api
That's not what I mean. What I mean is that given two products -- one with an
open protocol and one with closed -- very, very few customers will exercise a
buying preference for the former.

------
rogerbraun
But how do you disrupt the industry, then?

~~~
mkagenius
In my opinion, disrupting an industry is more of "what you do" thing than how
you do it.

------
fiatjaf
This is crazy. Every open protocol starts with a proprietary app. Also, the
examples cited make no sense.

~~~
cbd1984
> Every open protocol starts with a proprietary app.

Historically not true.

