

How Not to Be a Platform: Twitter's Firehose Mistake - njyx
http://www.3scale.net/2015/04/loosing-innovation-twitters-firehose-mistake/

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MichaelCrawford
Just yesterday I read in the Vancouver, Washington paper "The Columbian" of a
lawsuit that a fruit distributor just filed against a railroad company. The
fruit vendor had been shipping apples and pears to the midwest; this turned
out to be hugely popular with the result that it was offered a $30M
acquisition.

However the railroad is no longer willing to ship the apples as it is
reallocating its resources to transport crude oil instead.

I don't doubt that in the short term the oil is more profitable to the oil
company, but I expect that even without the lawsuit, they will lose in the
end. Those whose livelihoods depend on shipping their product will look for
other means of transport.

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njyx
Yes - that's a great example, if you're not inviting people to try things on
your platform you loose in the long run. It might be a genuine resource issue
- but seems unlikely that there's no arrangement that would work!

