Jeffrey McManus

Link: The opening of Web 2.0 service platforms

"What is at stake [for web sites that fail to open themselves to third parties as platforms] is other properties provide will provide much greater value than your property and take market share away. Rather than protecting your assets you are removing the millions in R&D that other are spending creating value-added services on your platform as well as extending reach in to markets, verticals and geographies that a single web site alone cannot reach unless it is Google.

This may be Web 2.0’s open source moment – to open up or remain closed."

I’m looking forward to reading more of John Newton’s thoughts on his new ZDNet blog. In this one he puzzles over why more big sites like LinkedIn haven’t gone the Facebook route and exposed their data to third parties — John assumes that it’s not the technology that’s standing in the way. I mostly agree with this, although there are tricky parts like rate limiting and authenticating through untrusted third-party applications that we’ve had to tackle.

That said, the barriers that I’m seeing today have more to do with ensuring that the platform is in alignment with the business and that third parties are adequately supported on the platform — it’s not enough to throw together a collection of integration points and call yourself an open platform.

Related posts:

1. Consulting Update
2. Does “Open” Really Help Developers?
3. What is a Platform Business?