A New Era of Platforms, Is This Web 3.0?

Over the past year there have been significant shifts in the technology industry. In particular, there has been a significant shift from personal computing to internet based computing. While we are still at an early stage in the internet based computing phase, significant strides have been made in the past year or two that have transformed the way many businesses work. Last night I was thinking about the dichotomy of personal computing platforms and web based platforms (yes I'm a geek). While contemplating, I realized the significant impact that the new platforms will have on businesses and primarily the developers that are building businesses on these platforms. Platforms of the Past While you can go back to the mainframe years as Marc Benioff does in his recent post on TechcrunchIT, I think it is much easier to start with the most recent platform wars: Microsoft Windows versus Macintosh. I'm not going to take the time to recount the history of both of these platforms in this article. If you'd like, you can read the History of Windows and the History of Mac OS. Also, check out the movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" for a more glamorized version of the battle between the two companies. The most significant difference of the personal computing platforms (operating systems) is that installing applications is 100 percent at a user's discretion. If someone wants to write a piece of software, they can get it installed on the platform whether or not the platform developer (Windows or Mac OS) want the software to run. While Microsoft and Apple monitor the applications being installed for the purpose of fixing security holes, none of the applications are effectively removed from platforms, it is up to the user to do so. Whether or not the user should have control of everything is debatable, but I surely would like to have control. The Rise of the Totalitarian Platforms There are a number of benefits from running web-based platforms. For users one of the primary benefits is portable accessibility. Anywhere you go you can instantly log-on to your platform (as long as you have internet access) and all of your data will be there. Another benefit is access to tremendous remote computing processing. For the average this doesn't matter as much though given that the increasing processor speeds are sufficient for most. The new wave of platforms comes from companies like Salesforce.com, Facebook, Amazon and Google. They provide individuals with access to a massive amount of computing resources both from a processing standpoint as well as from the storage point of view. I would argue that the primary limitation of these new platforms is that there is no guarantee of uptime and that you need to be connected to take advantage of them. Aside from that, these new platforms provide immense possibilities and it is where development resources are shifting to. Everywhere you look in the technology space, there are people creating new Facebook applications, new iPhone applications and new services that take leverage remote platforms (e.g. S3 and EC2). Some of these applications literally run on the remote platform while others are hosted by the developer. This new wave of platforms, which I would add the Apple iPhone to, provides an immense amount of power and control to the platform owners. This creates substantial tension between developers and the platforms. While tension between these parties existed in the first wave of platforms I would suggest that the tension is even greater because the platform owners have total control. Imagine if an application that relies on S3, Amazon.com's remote storage service, is arbitrarily determined as "malicious". Amazon could essentially shut down that application. We've already seen similar cases such as Top Friends shut down on Facebook and then yesterday a legitimate application was removed from iTunes. In this new environment, the developers are at the mercy of the platform owners and while it's not the end of the world, I think this is a riskier environment to run a business. While the shift to the cloud is ongoing and will continue to move forward, the relational logistics between businesses and platform owners still need to be worked through. When Marc Benioff describes this as a revolution, I agree. It is reminiscent of the colonial era. While I don't think we will see the digital version of a civil war ensue, I think that we will most definitely witness ongoing tension between the two parties: developers and platform owners. As a result, new rules will be defined. However it plays out it will be interesting to watch. Do you think this new era of web-based platforms is the beginning of Web 3.0?

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A New Era of Platforms, Is This Web 3.0?

Nick O'Neill

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Nick O'Neill