Blog – The Age of the Platform

The Future of Facebook

In the last 18 months, I've thought more and more about the Gang of Four and The Age of the Platform. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are clearly dominant but I'm starting to see cracks in Facebook. The other companies were started as businesses and we're used to paying them. Not so with Zuck's baby.

On Yahoo!, Tumblr, and Planks

It appears as if Yahoo! is going pony up more than $1 billion for Tumblr–and the move has platform written all over it.

A hefty price to pay? You betcha, but it's a move that makes sense for Marissa Mayer et al.

Think about it. At present, there's no way for consumers to take Yahoo! in different directions.

The Problem, Dear Marissa, Lies Not Within Yahoo!

Marissa Mayer knew what she was getting into. She's getting big bucks to turn around the once-mighty Yahoo!

From my standpoint, the company's problem is very simple.

Yahoo! has not really embraced platform thinking. Unlike Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and scores of others, Yahoo! doesn't really encourage external innovation. Until the company does, I'm not betting

New Edition of Book

I'm pleased to announce that a new edition of the book will be released in the next few weeks. I've added a new preface and made a few tweaks to the text. I'll also be including a surprise at the end of the text.

Finally, the size of the physical book will be increased from 5"

On Android and Frenemies

Updated 4/4/2013

In its quest to kill Apple, has Google inadvertently empowered its rivals–and created new ones?

We know that Google has created a monster in Samsung. Giving away Android has certainly hurt Apple, but what are the other consequences of the move? Now add in Facebook Home. I'm wondering if Larry Page now thinks

Is Facebook Blowing It?

Want to share something on Facebook with your followers?

Well, it may start to cost you, at least according to an interesting piece on WallBlog. From the article:

High profile Facebook users are growing increasingly frustrated at what they see as the social network gaming the system in order to encourage people to pay to

Relevance

On Forbes recently, Darcy Travlos wrote an interesting piece entitled Importance of Being a Platform (Apple, LinkedIn, Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook).

It's gratifying to see major publications run pieces on the central premise of your book nearly 18 months after it was published. It's particularly hard staying ahead of the technology/business curve these days, what

Why Most Big Companies Can’t Innovate

There's an interesting post on HBR about why so few large companies routinely innovate. Of course, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are all exceptions. From the piece:

What's striking about Fast Company's 2013 list of the world's 50 most innovative companies is the relative absence of large, established firms. Instead the list is dominated

Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone

From a recent ComputerWorld piece:

Microsoft yesterday confirmed that a retail copy of Office 2013 is permanently tied to the first PC on which it's installed, preventing customers from deleting the suite from one machine they own and installing it on another.

The move is a change from past Office end-user licensing agreements

If All Else Fails, Smear

Microsoft is back at it with its Google smear campaign. Google employees are reading individual emails to serve up better ads.

Or so Ballmer et. al would have you believe.

Bullocks!

To my knowledge, Google employees don't read any Gmail messages. Rather, algorithms serve up ads to support free products. This is the essence of the freemium model.