Scripting News: State of the Platform, 2007 edition

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

State of the Platform, 2007 edition

1. The great thing about the Internet was and is that it's the platform without a platform vendor. That's why it has been the engine of growth and innovation for so long, over thirty years now. There's no entity with eminent domain to forclose on a developer's relationship with customers. And none of us are incentivized to care for a vendor's garden in the same way we are with the community garden.

2. Perhaps it's for the best that the iPhone has no Apple-sanctioned SDK. That has forced developers to create their own, even though results so far haven't gotten beyond "Hello World." If Apple had provided an SDK, then Bug Labs would not be quite as welcome, and every developer that gained traction would be wondering when Apple was going to take their market.

3. Facebook is a platform vendor, obviously, and when one develops a Facebook app, one is willingly climbing into the trunk, which has a lock, and only one entity has the key, the platform vendor.

4. What about Twitter?

5. What about Feedburner?

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:21 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jul Sep