Law of Control (Facebook platform story from HackerNews)

[Infinity]

Good story about basing your business on another company's platform.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

 

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[mcjon77]

Thanks for the great article. In the thread there are also links to other articles that also deal with the "law of control", all excellent reads for developers, like myself.

I was actually having an internal debate about this issue recently. It concerns developing iphone apps, verses developing web applications. While iphone apps are quite popular (iphone apps in the itunes store easily outsell android apps, even though there are more android phones AND more android apps available in the android market), the amount of control given to Apple just makes me uncomfortable.

99+% of all iphone apps are sold at the itunes store. At the same time, they are notorious in their delays in approval and seeming arbitrary manner in which they approve or reject apps. An iphone app development company is essentially completely tying its success not only to the iphone platform, but to the judgement of the people at Apple to approve submission to the itunes store. It would be like producing a product that can only be sold in one store, owned by one guy. Having been burned as an affiliate when my affiliate program changed its rules, I have ZERO desire to put myself into that situation again.

Something similar goes on with Youtube. Right now, there are people that make their living posting videos to their Youtube channel. However, there have been multiple times when such people have had their account suspended or deleted for reasons beyond their control. In many cases, these individuals had to start from square one to rebuild their subscriber base (and with it their income). Stories like these really help me stay focused on maximizing the control I have over my business.

 

[911Carrera]

Basing your business on someone else's platform is no different than working for them. They have the control to kill your income stream at will, just like getting fired from a job.

It's ok to have some side businesses based on someone's platform, but your main business should not if you want real freedom. For my future web businesses, I plan to sell my own ads for my sites. I won't rely on google ads or even use them.

 

[gabrielpark]

...
I was actually having an internal debate about this issue recently. It concerns developing iphone apps, verses developing web applications... apps are quite popular (iphone apps in the itunes store easily outsell android apps, even though there are more android phones AND more android apps available in the android market), the amount of control given to Apple just makes me uncomfortable...

Something similar goes on with Youtube. Right now, there are people that make their living posting videos to their Youtube channel. However, there have been multiple times when such people have had their account suspended or deleted for reasons beyond their control. In many cases, these individuals had to start from square one to rebuild their subscriber base (and with it their income). Stories like these really help me stay focused on maximizing the control I have over my business.

There is no popular alternative to Youtube so I feel sorry for youtube marketers. Even if they can direct traffic to their websites and capture leads that way, they are still 100% dependent on YT as an initial traffic source. Anyhow...

Have you explored ways to package web applications as apps for the different OS-platforms? I'm sure there are wrappers for web apps that you can use to convert them into Apple apps. I'm considering creating a Java-based dating site and android app, and then having someone else write the Apple App once I have enough revenue to pay for it. I'm not sure this is the best approach so I'm looking for opinions wherever I can find them.

The idea that Facebook could become the social infrastructure of the world is frightening. Nobody should have that much control.

But as far as business goes, you can't control the platform or the payment processor so you (we) need to prioritize and then diversify on to as many platforms as possible, as quickly as possible in order to avoid becoming platform-dependent. I think it's more useful to focus on the markets/reach of the appstores instead of worrying and hand-wringing about the platform and payment processor. I wonder if it would be better to sell loss-leaders on these app stores and then sell more full featured/expensive apps once you have the customers attention. Stupid question: you can't capture the customers information once you've made the initial sale, can you? Maybe you could set up an in-app lead capturing method so you could do upsells or cross-promotions of similar products. Just an idea.

The market is also about to fragment a lot more due to recent developments with Facebook, Chrome, and Amazon.

• Apple and Itunes/App Store
• Android Market / Google Wallet
• Chrome Market / Google Wallet
• Facebook Platform / facebook Payments?
• Amazon Appstore / Checkout

And this isn't even accounting for Windows 8 and any future popularity of WP7. By mid-2013 the combination of Xbox integration with Windows 8 and solid Nokia phones might make WP7 worth developing for, especially if you develop games.

I'm curious about how other developers deal with this. Right now it seems like cross-platform development and cross-promotion on different social networks is the safest, but most time-consuming - way to go.

Edit: Just found http://www.phonegap.com/ - looks like a pretty cool way to develop cross platform apps. Might not work for all types of apps, but it's something.

 

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