Ecosystems and Platforms

I’ve been kicking some ideas around in my head for a few weeks about a post on developer ecosystems and platforms, looking back to the battle for the desktop between Apple and Microsoft and their divergent developer kit strategies and then fast forwarding up to Salesforce.com’s AppExchange and most recently the Facebook Platform. I thought through some stuff and even started writing a few times…then I read this post on Marc Andreessen’s blog and realized I shouldn’t even bother. Definitely give it a read if you are trying to figure out what all the hype is about. Also realize that Andreessen himself is deep in the business side of social networking with his own company Ning which released a Facebook application today. Ning allows users to create their own social networks, but their Facebook application…get this…lets users develop branded Facebook applications, which will be hosted by Ning. All things to keep in mind when reading Andreessen’s post.

The moral of the story: hosting a platform on which others operate and run businesses is a good place to be…it’s tough as hell to get there though.