Recently a lot of companies have been trying to make themselves into THE Platform of choice. Facebook’s Apps API, Google’s one-up OpenSocial, Netvibes universal widgets, etc. Every company wants to be the platform and control as much attention as possible. I’ve heard some people say “Google is the Internet.”
Online, things are now moving at breakneck speeds. Over the past 5 years we’re seen tremendous growth (and volatility). I don’t know who the big players will be in 2010, but I can tell you this – the Internet will be the platform – it always has been, it always will be.
If you think back to just a year and half ago, people had already thought the social networking game was over. Myspace was the platform. They owned that space and it seemed like catching up was impossible. This is the thought process we somehow allow ourselves to follow.
YouTube owns video, Facebook owns social networking, Google owns search. But it’s only 2007.
So invest, develop for, and play on all these sites and networks, make widgets for their plaforms. But listen to Mary Trigiani when she says “The Internet IS the platform.” And no single company will own any large part of it for long.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for reminding us that these things come and go; the internet IS the platform, which leaves so many possibilities to be discovered when you think outside the box of MySpace, Facebook, etc.
However, on a somewhat wild tanget (but still related) I think there is a limit to the growth of the internet due solely to the infrastructure issue. I can’t divulge my source, and maybe it’s just because we were up so late shooting the breeze that he mentioned this, but evidently the Internet God believes the internet will break in a few years (he works for the Internet God).
So here’s where I try to bring it back to your point: the internet IS the platform, but how much more room for creativity do we have? Where is the new innovation, and do we have room for it? I have ideas about what ad campaigns I want to develop online, but either a) the technology is still in development, or b) it doesn’t exist (that I know of). What do *you* see coming down the line? What changes are you excited about?
To me the most exciting part of it is that whatever comes down the line is unpredictable. If you consider what you thought of the internet 10 years ago compared to what you think of it now, you can see how unforeseeable the future is.