Taking advantage of open for proprietary purposes
I’ve started to realize more and more - that we’re gonna see various products, services and platforms built on open technologies that will then insert their own proprietary solutions, formats and protocols into the mix to achieve lock-in.
This seems to be the formula for success.
You provide some killer app functionality, suck in lifestreams and profile data, aggregate content and services and wrap it all in some warm and fuzzy UI. Then you lock-in your users into YOUR solution and sit back and wait til your installed base grows - and then slap on some sort of ‘freemium’ monetization model, if you’re ever lucky enough to get that far.
This path is what’s acceptable to VCs (like Fred Wilson and Saul Klein) and I think we’ll see LOTS of these kind of plays in the near future. But as we see open technologies like OpenID and oAuth grow - I can’t help but wonder what Glue, Twine, Twitter, OpenX, Bug Labs and a host of other startups are doing to give back to the community?
Will these folks show up at the upcoming IIW (Internet identity Workshop) and make a contribution or just listen?
Will these new breed of startups ever propose open standards that could ‘glue’ each other together?
Will these startups work with their competitors for the good of their end-users?
Will these startups allow their user’s profile data, social graphs and content to leave and never return?
Will these startups allow their services to be synchronzied and ‘glued’ into OTHER competitive glue services?
I can’t help but wonder if ‘claiming‘ that you’re open is just this year’s version of the free market place (which is code for huge multi-nationals moving jobs overseas and hiding profits in the Caymans.)
And what about being International in scope and focus? Will these startups do anything more than just “localize” their products into Russian, Chinese or Arabic? Will they become the new version of ‘carpetbaggers’ bringing their Silicon Valley-style hucksterism to a new generation of ‘plantation slaves?’
In this era when so many Reagen Republicans and Libertarians are voting for Obama, will jumping on the “open” bandwagon be this year’s equivalent of being “politically correct?”
Certainly Open is the new Black - and the VCs have figured that out.
Now they’re just trying to twist it and rip it off and figure out how to exploit and monetize people in a “Web 2.0″ kind of way.
And I’m sure Tim O’Reilly will give them plenty of air time - that’s for sure.
I just think that when you take advantage of being open and benefit from being open, you kind of HAVE TO contribute something back to the community.
Like Plaxo is.
And Google.
And Yahoo or Microsoft.
Sure they’re big enough to afford to do that - but it’s also a kharma thing. None of these behemoths are expecting to make money off of being open. They ARE however forced to keep up with the Joneses and provide their userbases with compelling experiences to keep them coming back.
So they HAVE to go open!
But what about startups? They’re in a precarious position where to build up their installed bases they need to APPEAR to be open, dangle their killer app functionality in front of the world and sit back and wait for their ‘roach motel’ strategy to engage.
There are plenty of smaller companies making contributions to the world of open. So it’s not like you CAN’T contribute cause of lack of resources or focus.
Companies like Vidoop - which is sponsoring Chris Messina and the DiSO project. Or Jan Rain or ooTao or Meebo or everything that Kaliya Hamlin does.
I call upon incubators like BetaWorks and YCombinator and startups like Automattic, Seesmic or Glue to help us all develop open standards to extend the blogosphere, XMPP and the OpenID attribute exchange, to connect lifestreams together and to establish open servers for OUR DATA - so that web celebs like Robert Scoble don’t have to build up social graphs over and over again - on every service they go to.
Folks - when open becomes the norm - we’ll ALL benefit from it. And the folks who helped get us there will get the credit, the monetization and the kharma.
But companies that rode on our coattails, sucked up the air around us and then sold their companies to the highest bidders - will have trouble crossing the river Hades - when judgement day arrives.
Tags: kharma, open, Open is the new Black
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I’m with you on this.
But the nature of our work, as hard as it is to sustain without those who benefit giving back, is to do a lot of the interop and commoditization work of the Open Web to keep the web moving forward.
Many of us want this kind of work and want the results of our work to resonate widely, and benefit many.
Indeed, much of the way we work flies in the face of the winner-take-all, zero-sum model. It’s not like we’re necessarily socialists (I wish more people actually knew what the term meant, rather than simply having an allergic reaction to it), but that our work benefits over a longer time horizon than most VCs or companies can or do operate is our wont.
Personally, this is the only kind of work I really know how to do. I can only solve problems when thinking about them systematically. People and companies will invariably benefit from this work in the short term, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a better sustainability model for work like this. I guess this is why the Medicis were so wise in their patronage of the Arts; I think we need the same kind of patronage model for supporting and ensuring the health and well-being of the Open Web so that all can continue to benefit from and compete on it.
I’m with you on this.
But the nature of our work, as hard as it is to sustain without those who benefit giving back, is to do a lot of the interop and commoditization work of the Open Web to keep the web moving forward.
Many of us want this kind of work and want the results of our work to resonate widely, and benefit many.
Indeed, much of the way we work flies in the face of the winner-take-all, zero-sum model. It’s not like we’re necessarily socialists (I wish more people actually knew what the term meant, rather than simply having an allergic reaction to it), but that our work benefits over a longer time horizon than most VCs or companies can or do operate is our wont.
Personally, this is the only kind of work I really know how to do. I can only solve problems when thinking about them systematically. People and companies will invariably benefit from this work in the short term, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a better sustainability model for work like this. I guess this is why the Medicis were so wise in their patronage of the Arts; I think we need the same kind of patronage model for supporting and ensuring the health and well-being of the Open Web so that all can continue to benefit from and compete on it.
I’m with you on this.
But the nature of our work, as hard as it is to sustain without those who benefit giving back, is to do a lot of the interop and commoditization work of the Open Web to keep the web moving forward.
Many of us want this kind of work and want the results of our work to resonate widely, and benefit many.
Indeed, much of the way we work flies in the face of the winner-take-all, zero-sum model. It’s not like we’re necessarily socialists (I wish more people actually knew what the term meant, rather than simply having an allergic reaction to it), but that our work benefits over a longer time horizon than most VCs or companies can or do operate is our wont.
Personally, this is the only kind of work I really know how to do. I can only solve problems when thinking about them systematically. People and companies will invariably benefit from this work in the short term, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a better sustainability model for work like this. I guess this is why the Medicis were so wise in their patronage of the Arts; I think we need the same kind of patronage model for supporting and ensuring the health and well-being of the Open Web so that all can continue to benefit from and compete on it.
Agreed. I have been working with Doc on VRM for the past two years now and data is the key starting point. There is a lot more but that’s the start. I have been thinking about various ways in which our data is imprisoned and realised that the web is more for the platform/data owner than for the user/data creator. FAIL.
Here is some models of ‘data imprisonment’ that we currently see online: http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2008/05/models-of-data-imprisonment/
Agreed. I have been working with Doc on VRM for the past two years now and data is the key starting point. There is a lot more but that’s the start. I have been thinking about various ways in which our data is imprisoned and realised that the web is more for the platform/data owner than for the user/data creator. FAIL.
Here is some models of ‘data imprisonment’ that we currently see online: http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2008/05/models-of-data-imprisonment/
Agreed. I have been working with Doc on VRM for the past two years now and data is the key starting point. There is a lot more but that’s the start. I have been thinking about various ways in which our data is imprisoned and realised that the web is more for the platform/data owner than for the user/data creator. FAIL.
Here is some models of ‘data imprisonment’ that we currently see online: http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2008/05/models-of-data-imprisonment/