Comments on: iLike, Lookery, Google Voice: Recent platform lessons from app developers

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By: Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:08:08 +0000

I agree and did a post called iLIke & MySpace - it doesn't make sense as the sale itself has some holes in the story.

If iLIke was truly profitable, i doubt this sale happens. Making money off of FB is tough

By: Dave McClure

Dave McClure — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:09:07 +0000

good observations.

key issue is alignment between platform and developer on what their primary objectives are. while Facebook is still focused on growth, this is a tough one for the dev community. however, in the near future it's possible that with the rollout of payments there may be greater clarity around how developers and Facebook can mutually benefit.

but at the moment, i agree with the "don't get too comfortable" advice.

(and btw, this goes for Twitter ecosystem as well as FB)

By: zipflash

zipflash — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:13:19 +0000

Exactly.

I sold a top-5 PalmOS download (FireViewer) for many years, but never entered FB or iPhone -- partly because of competitive intensity, but mainly because distribution was overcentralized.

Once, a Palm reseller shut off our product for a few weeks during a minor dispute. But we still had over half our revenue, because we had three other channels. This improved our bargaining position from "Please turn us back on," to "Please turn us back on, or we'll give all our sales to your competitor." Big difference.

Now that anyone can sell almost anything direct, it's a sucker bet to choose a closed-distribution business, just to get extra visibility.

By: niels

niels — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:40:41 +0000

Andrew – specifically for the FB Platform I think the core issue is (lack of) monetization as part of the overall platform strategy. FB has been “consistent” in stating monetization as secondary versus growth and this de-emphasis was/is magnified for 3rd party appdevs building on top of the Fb Platform foundation. To be a successful 3rd party the primary goal was getting gazillion of MAU thereby at least monetize with ads (this play did partially work in early platform days). Getting to that goal meant: 1) be a first mover (like Zach's FreeGifts) or 2) Spam the heck out of users (like countless quizz apps or games). This eventually lead to a catch-22 game between Fbook imposing tighter API restrictions and dev's trying to work around these to boost DAU/MAU.

Imagine how the picture could have looked if FB Platform within first 6 month would have had a monetization component for 3rd party devs. Arguably the whole spam topic might not have been so severe and devs might have been less focused on absolute DAU/MAU numbers and instead building valuable apps for end users. It's not by coincidence that other similar sites like Tencent's QQ/QZone in China, DENA/MobageTown in Japan, 2ndLife, WoW,etc all have monetization models beyond ads (aka premium).

By: platformuser

platformuser — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:31:10 +0000

“For platforms, they seek to control the applications which depend on them, and prioritize the long-term success of the application ecosystem rather than any individual application’s.” This sentence seems to contradict itself. The success of the application ecosystem requires independence and successful companies, not control by the “mother-ship”. I would wager that no mother ship wants to control the applications. What I think the platform most cares about is developing an experience where users continue to discover and use new ones for new use cases as developers build them. In the case of Facebook, it was obvious that users were starting to move away from apps since each one involved spamming your friends to a frightening level. In the case of Apple, they are trying to make sure you don't get to a point with apps where your battery runs out every 10 minutes (no background processing yet) or spammed by notifications (approval for and centralizing push notifications). For apple, you can't totally defend the Google Voice situation perhaps, but that still has yet to fully play out.