Ecosystems for us all
Marc Shiller writes (inspired by Dave Winer) of the notion of Building Companies so that others can profit. That’s what I did with my first company and that’s the goal of Broadband Mechanics as well.
Our developer program has started (we’ve got a wiki) and we have a mail list of PeopleAggregator developers - and a bunch of networks have been created already.
We also hope to mesh into all sorts of web services and web based APIs - and provide those services to our customers (and via us - THEIR customers.)
This is a fundamental issue about platforms. You need to be able to enable ecosystems. Get all sorts of people making money. That’s what RSS did - made a LOT of people a LOT of money.
There’s even been a VC fund created just for Facebook apps. I sure hope this fund expands beyond just locked-in Facebook apps. They should be funding companies that fundamentally live this sort of an environment - whether its Facebook, Vox, NetVibes or Klostu.
So - yes - I agree. All software should work with other software, and that’s why we need open standards to connect all these applications and services - together.
Complaining about others not being open and helping us all profit - is one sure way to ‘out’ the old school mentality. Constantly putting pressure on the big players, like Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL - is also one way to create ‘open’ networks and infrastructure.
But we believe that by putting these features and principles into our own product - that’s the best way to create change. Live by your own principles - eat your own dogfood.
August 12th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Good thoughts Marc, and of course I agree. I wrote a piece at the beginning of what became Web 2.0 about this, after attending an industry conference where Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy explained how they were going to make all the money (heh, look how that turned out). Here’s the key paragraph.
“Here’s an invitation to truly embrace the creativity of others. Instead of beating your breast about how great you are, try saying how great someone else is. Look for win-wins, make that your new religion. Establish a policy that nothing will be announced unless it can be shown that someone else will win because of what you’re doing. How much happier we would be if instead of crippling each other with fear, we competed to empower each others’ creativity.”
That article was about a whole conference that was just like Calacanis’s speech at Gnomedex. It was from an industry that no longer leads anyone. But it scared a lot of people then, just like Jason’s attacks against me are scaring a lot of (good) people. They don’t want him to turn on them, so they don’t dare write about this publicly. They’re telling me about it privately, and I’m not asking them to stick their necks out, that should be entirely their choice.
August 13th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
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