A quick post about fat protocols.

I don't think they're right about this.

Twitter could easily have been a fat protocol, and for quite a while the Union Square Ventures guys were pushing that idea. 

It's a platform! they said.

Then they did what owned platforms so often do, they took it back.

Oh no we never said it was a platform.

We never encouraged anyone to build on it.

So instead of a million apps, there was one.

They'll do that with BitCoin too. Because it's easier to go public with a big thick app than it is to sell the idea that one of your developers might eat your lunch.

I think it's totally possible that Twitter could have been thriving as a thick platform, but it requires a technologist to be in charge, one who knows how to relate to other technologists. You have to invest in your developers both with support and dollars. The thick platform vendor must be a venture capitalist, a visionary arm-twister friend to developers.  

I think they will blink, and take back the idea that Blockchain is a platform, and someone will try to own it. 

But I could be wrong. That's why it's a sport and it pays to watch carefully how the bets turn out. ;-)