ReadWriteWeb has a post about platforms like Facebook, OpenSocial and Flock letting us down:
Our culture of sensation and free makes it much harder for platforms to think deeply and be disciplined. Google felt they had to come out with something to stop Facebook’s momentum. Facebook rushed to create a completely open infrastructure; and it backfired both for users and developers. Having been burnt by Facebook, small and large companies alike will now think twice before investing in a presence on platforms. This is a shame, for we need platforms and we need them to work well.
A good rule of thumb is that if you’re designing it comprehensively from top to bottom it won’t be a sustainable platform. A sustainable platform has to evolve, or develop, or emerge to become self-sustaining. The kind of complexity required can’t be put together intentionally.
Having said that I think Google as a whole has the potential to evolve into a kind of sustainable platform. There’s a lot going on there that isn’t necessarily intentional or controlled, and we might see it “come together” into something crazy eventually.
Another potential platform is WordPress, which is evolving in a much more modest and ground-up way than Google, but I’m seeing a lot of opportunity.
