Comments on: Open mobile platforms and Facebook developer refugees

By: golfman_story

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By: gabrielpdansby

gabrielpdansby — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:21:53 +0000

As a result, I’d argue that a class of social network “refugees” are forming who are looking to build the next new thing, and the mobile platform (iPhone and otherwise) will start looking pretty attractive for them. I wonder how many of the lessons learned on the FB platform, like social gaming, viral distribution, mocospace.com etc. will port over to iPhone as well.

By: Rosanna Costa

Rosanna Costa — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:34:25 +0000

nice article! nice site. you're in my rss feed now
keep it up

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:04:46 +0000

I think people are being scared off the app store as well. Apple are too flinchy when it comes to turning your app off and they don't really give a damn if you're cranky about it.

The app store could become yet another download-site heap of zillions of apps. People will spend time and effort marketing outside of the app store and have to push their customers through Apple's tiny window that charges you 30%, which just means Apple could end up making more than you do. Why work for them?

Maybe Google's phone will be "good enough" (like Windows V1 was). V1 might not be much, but it'll be much freer and maybe that'll attract developers who don't like big brother.

One thing Apple *does* have going for it - their customers are used to spending money. Produce a quality app and you can charge for it.

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:19:09 +0000

I think the objection most people would make to focusing on WWW+search these days is that too many people are doing it, and building backlinks is harder than trying to conquer the “latest” platform in particular in cases where there are barriers to entry (like the iphone platform)

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:18:16 +0000

true! And I'd add one more thing, which is that “SEO” is basically the black art of hooking into the google SERP platform

By: dave mcclure

dave mcclure — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:15:12 +0000

how about that good old service called "the world wide web", and the 'platform' known as SEARCH?

pricing: whatever you want to charge (see pmt service below)
distribution: primarily search (paid=SEM, free=SEO)
audience: ~1B+ users worldwide (more? i can't kep track)
coding lang: any (html + whatever)
cost of service: none
payment service: paypal, cc

seems like WWW+Search is still a pretty darn good platform to play around in... and it monetizes ok too.

By: Jason Hable

Jason Hable — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:35:14 +0000

People have been waiting for a useful mobile internet platform for nearly 10 years. In my opinion, Apple has successfully cracked the code and is selling it for $200. I remember a couple of years ago Mayfield hired an intern that went back and re-read through all of the 2000-era business plans that falsely assumed ubiquitous broadband to see if they were viable in today's market. I suspect that several entrepreneurs and VCs will do the same thing today with the iPhone. Throw in location-based services and you can expect a ton of new investment.

By: Jesse Farmer

Jesse Farmer — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:49:26 +0000

I talked with Caroline McCarthy about the iPhone platform vs. Facebook back in July, and I just don't see many cross-polination opportunities.

First, there's the technical gap. Objective-C on one hand and PHP/Ruby/whatever on the other. Writing client-side software is harder than server-side software, at least until you hit scalability problems.

Second, there's a cultural gap. There's a definite "Facebook dev" community and, in my experience, they all come from web dev land, so Apple dev land is virgin territory for them.

Here's how I see it: Facebook devs are successful (or not) and are in it for the money (or not).

If they're successful and in it for the money the investment required to support both the iPhone and Facebook might not be worth it. I don't see Slide and RockYou going this route, for example.

Also, "successful" on Facebook means understanding viral stuff, a skill that has a much smaller impact given Apple's distribution mechanism.

If they're not successful and in it for the money, well, most of these people are just hacks. They churn out crappy app after crappy app hoping to strike it rich. I doubt they have the skills necessary to design a decent iPhone app, let alone get it past the approval process.

The ones who might tinker with the iPhone are the academic types who tinkered with the Facebook platform, who aren't in it for the money, but they're not going to be churning out blockbusters. The price barrier is also a real one, here. They might be content just tinkering and distributing it to a few friends and family rather than forking over $100 to distribute it to the world at large.