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Great article on different types of “Platforms”
Read this and get smarter: blog.pmarca.com: The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet.
The fastest summary:
- A Level 1 platform’s apps run elsewhere, and call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services — this is how Flickr does it.
- A Level 2 platform’s apps run elsewhere, but inject functionality into the platform via a plug-in API — this is how Facebook does it. Most likely, a Level 2 platform’s apps also call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services.
- A Level 3 platform’s apps run inside the platform itself — the platform provides the "runtime environment" within which the app’s code runs.
And which companies are working on Level 3 platforms, other than Marc’s Ning?
- Salesforce.com
- SecondLife
- Amazon (through AWS)
- Akamai
I think the really interesting part of a Level 2 and Level 3 really has to do with user acquisition – they allow you to absorb a huge torrent of traffic if your application is designed to hook into their API deeply enough to create viral loops of your own.
Recent posts
How would you classify this new blog traffic widget, which appears to be “going viral”? I guess level 2 since it’s running elsewhere but gives some minor passive functionality to the blog visitor (signup link, different blog post titles each time).
BlogRush
17 Sep 07 at 10:09 am
Andrew,
What are your thoughts on a social networking web platform that can be deployed alongside a portal or ecommerce site? I found Marc’s classification inetersting, have made a small extension to that on my blog posting.
Vijay
Dekoh
Vijay
18 Sep 07 at 4:13 pm
This doesn’t make sense to me.
How is a level 3 “better for the developer” than a level 2?
You have to do more work, you pay more in ongoing costs, and any of your developer-users who are competent (i.e. likely to produce something successful) don’t get any appreciable benefit.
Hosting is incredibly cheap these days, and developing basic functionality is incredibly easy – look at the proliferation of non-programmers and what they’ve done on FB. Reducing the dev cost and hosting cost over and above a level 2 platform seems to have very little actual point to it.
And, worst of all, with a level 3 platform, you make it into an “all-or-nothing” proposal, completely about-face from what has driven the proliferation of Web 2.0: people hate using you because you’ve become a proprietary platform that they cannot exist without.
If I develop an FB app, and FB disappears tomorrow, I can still run my app all over the web with almost literally no changes to code.
If I develop something in SL, and Linden implodes tomorrow … I lose everything.
Adam Martin
27 Sep 07 at 10:41 am
Actually, I think this is so intensely wrong, I wrote it up in more detail:
http://tmachine1.dh.bytemark.co.uk/blog/index.php/2007/09/27/internet-as-platform-marc-andreessen-is-wrong/
/me ducks and runs for cover
Adam Martin
27 Sep 07 at 11:15 am