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Pertinent to revisit Yegge's famous platform rant[1]. Companies like calling themselves platforms—more so in the modern times—because they can usually provide

Pertinent to revisit Yegge's famous platform rant[1]. Companies like calling themselves platforms—more so in the modern times—because they can usually provide one or dimensions of value. For everything else, they need external entities to bring in value which in turn brings more users. Facebook, for instance, could have simply been a directory of friends, maybe with a chat feature and would have continued being that till the next Facebook took its place. They'd have never been a 'social network platform' However, to make money and commoditize the swath of data users were giving Facebook and in turn, make users give them even more data, they needed other companies to provide value in a few other dimensions—games from Zynga, articles from publishers, ads from everyone under the sun. For this, they had to become a platform and market themselves as such. It is the same case with say Google where they needed companies like Rotten Tomatoes, or Wikipedia to exist so Google can make search results better. Platform today isn't what the Bill Gates quote indicates but is just a way for companies to meet their value providers halfway. I have the data, come build services on top of it. It is a win-win till it isn't—see the Weather Channel pulling out of FB videos[2]. Maybe platforms of yore vied to make their value providers richer than they are, but platforms of today are goldmines for value providers to commercialize that value. For instance, YouTube creators are the value providers without whom YouTube isn't valuable, but for those value providers to make money off the content they create, they are reliant on YouTube. Each YouTube channel is a company of sorts as many many YouTubers are doing it as their full-time job. To say that the value providers' companies should be more expensive than YouTube itself is a funny proposition. [1] https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17134451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17134451

PantaloonFlames 8y ago
> To say that the value providers' companies should be more expensive than YouTube itself is a funny proposition. Why? That’s the Gates Line. Why is it funny ?
- eigen-vector 8y ago
  That's my entire comment about. The Gates line made sense when platforms brought infrastructure. It doesn't when the platform is less about infrastructure and more about providing an audience for the services built on top to succeed. To clarify, maybe these comparisons are not justified when we're comparing different kinds of platforms altogether. Infrastructure platforms still exist, like AWS and Azure. The solution is likely classifying—in Ben's terms— 'aggregators' into an entirely different bucket called data platforms. When dealing with infra platforms, the value providers build things on top of the platform and that's where the relationship ends. If company A works on AWS and makes $X MM a year, it could still make the same $X MM if it is built on Azure (all infra costs being the same). Whereas, a content creator can produce the same video and would make less money by hosting on Facebook as compared to hosting it on YouTube. The platform has a direct impact on commercializing the content/value/whatchamacallit.

PantaloonFlames 8y ago

> To say that the value providers' companies should be more expensive than YouTube itself is a funny proposition. Why? That’s the Gates Line. Why is it funny ?

eigen-vector 8y ago
That's my entire comment about. The Gates line made sense when platforms brought infrastructure. It doesn't when the platform is less about infrastructure and more about providing an audience for the services built on top to succeed. To clarify, maybe these comparisons are not justified when we're comparing different kinds of platforms altogether. Infrastructure platforms still exist, like AWS and Azure. The solution is likely classifying—in Ben's terms— 'aggregators' into an entirely different bucket called data platforms. When dealing with infra platforms, the value providers build things on top of the platform and that's where the relationship ends. If company A works on AWS and makes $X MM a year, it could still make the same $X MM if it is built on Azure (all infra costs being the same). Whereas, a content creator can produce the same video and would make less money by hosting on Facebook as compared to hosting it on YouTube. The platform has a direct impact on commercializing the content/value/whatchamacallit.