
Being Someone Else's Bitch, Being Your Own Bitch... Or Making Others Your Bitch  - peter123
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/entrepreneurs/articles/20110531/01505814470/being-someone-elses-bitch-being-your-own-bitch-making-others-your-bitch.shtml
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ezy
There is no "platform" lesson here. The lesson is not to adopt risky business
"models" based on wishful thinking. In one case, don't compete directly with
the platform provider -- in the other case, it was never really a "platform"
to begin with.

If I make a mobile app for wide distribution, I will probably confine myself
to iPhone, because it will make me more money for less hassle than Android. I
don't expect Apple to pull the rug out for under me in most cases, because I
don't expect to compete with them directly.

If I'm selling a mobile app which acts as a book store, I would be dumb. Why?
Well, the most prominent is that you're directly competing with Apple's __own
__application released from Day One of it's book format device. Unless you're
a large company with bargaining power (e.g. Netflix, Amazon), it will not go
well...

Similarly with all the drama about the Twitter API. Twitter is not a platform.
99% of the complainers, well they're making Twitter clients. That's it. They
are taking twitter's data and displaying it slightly differently(?[1]). They
aren't creating anything new, or particularly original, sorry. Once a couple
good clients came out, the game was over, and Twitter purchased one as the
canonical version. In this case, you're in early or you don't go in.

[1] Most of them, tellingly, I have a hard time seeing the difference between.

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bad_user
A comparison between companies and how they've dealt with bitch-slapping their
bitches would be interesting.

