Marc Andreessen’s post on ‘the three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet’ outlines what he sees as three levels of platforms available today.

I totally agree with Marc with one condition - a Level 3 platform does NOT have to be hosted, centralized Solaris driven Opsware enhanced behemoth.

That’s what PeopleAggregator is. A Level 3 platform available BOTH as a hosted service and source code download. Now anyone can have their own platform, running it on GoDaddy and mesh into a distributed web - which will connect into open APIs from Google, Microsoft and hopefully Yahoo and Facebook as well.

Fred Wilson asked some intelligent questions about platform - so I’d like to respond to both Marc’s post and Fred’s questions:

1. I totally agree with Marc on his assessment of these three levels of platforms. He brilliantly analyzes how developers lock themselves into particular sets of APIs - just like developers locked ourselves into Toolboxes in the 80’s and early 90’s (only then it was just Microsoft and Apple as the vendors.) Enabling developers to customize a platform is crucial to its success.

2. Fred Wilson then brings up the point that many of these ‘platform’ aspects (storage, database availabiliy, heavy lifting computing) are available on the web. Fred likes Marc’s ideas of apps running “off platform” (and so do I) - and Marc wonders why ALL apps haven’t been written this way - all along?

3. My answer to both Fred and Marc is - YES. We’ll have a world of the future where “off platform” apps run - tied into a centralized behemoth like Ning, or distributed to the wind - using platforms like PeopleAggregator. Oh - did I forget to mention that Google will enable”off platform” apps soon and that Microsoft is almost there - as well?

4. So as is often the case - the world doesn’t go with just one scenario - its a fun mish mash of dependent, independent, small, large - external, internal - International and local environments - all working together in tandem - using the web for what its good for.

5. Sharing social graphs is one standard we need. A standard for authentication is something we have already. APIs for social networking are here and will expand out into areas like ‘widgetizaton’ and virtual networks - and lets not forget personas, statistics and master profiles in general. In this great mish mash of social networking - will emerge a decentralized mesh of everybody who wants to play together. Those who don’t, will get isolated into a corner

5. So - go download PeopleAggregator - HERE - and run your own platform.

So to summarize, the unveiling of the layers of the onion and chess game strategy and evolution of Broadband Mechanics continues. Recent developments around:

- Google’s “bringing social to ALL software”

- and Google’s upcoming announcements (if you believe TechCrunch)

- Facebook’s redefining of what a platform is

- Ning’s embracing the notion of meta-networks and running with it

- Brad Fitzpatrick’s manifesto on open social graphs

- Zimbra’s monetization of an open source white label strategy

all point to what PeopleAggregator is all about.

So now go and download your OWN platform - cause you wouldn’t wanna lock your balls into ANYBODY’s vice - but your own. Right?

And as long as we have open standards to inter-connect all these social networks, blogging platforms and other forms of social media - together - we’ll have a happy, distributed mesh - that anyone can play in.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.