2. • First print in 2011. Written
by Phil Simon, a sought-after
keynote speaker and author
of 7 books.
• How gang of 4 redefined
business in web 2.0 era.
• Features of platform, it is a
new business model but has
limitations.
• How can you build a
platform? Few prediction for
future.
• More about management
but technology.
About the Book
3.
4. : Where are we?
• Web 1.0 is web use as “information portal”.
• Web 2.0 is all about customers, is about platforms.
• Web 3.0 is about Web of Data.
1993-Early 2005 Mid 2005 - Present
5.
6. What’s the
• It is simply a set of integrated
planks.
• It allows people to reach and
connect with each other and
obtain information.
• Today, the most powerful
platforms
1) Root in equally powerful technologies, and
intelligent usage
2) Benefit tremendously from vibrant ecosystems
8. of Platforms
• Cannot guarantee success.
• Cannot save dying businesses
and technologies.
• Might be too large to control.
It abuse, scams, and
misconduct.
• Privacy is always a concern.
(Permission Marketing
needed)
Do you know, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook…are
being spied by NSA, CIA?
9. Platform vs
• Traditional monopolizes are robber barons:
conglomerate have achieved monopolies
through horizontal and vertical integration.
• If not collaboration kill or be killed.
10. Amazon: book
publisher,
hardware
manufacturer,
reseller of excess
compute power.
Apple: world’s
largest content
company.
Google: world’s most
valuable advertising
company – with its
sights set on
conquering just
about every other
market.
11.
12. • Amazon simplified online shopping process, accurate
recommendations to keep customers. (e.g. 1-click, also buy...).
• Successful permission marketing.
• First mover advantage.
• Jeff: Kindle: “we want make money when people use our
devices, not when they buy our devices.”
13. • In recent years, shift itself from a product to a platform strategy.
• App explosion partnership getting more social platform
• Ask for permission.
• Apple has a high/ restrictive standard for its product design as
well as app design. They filter apps before let apps released on
apple store.
15. • In his early 20’s, Zuckerberg wasn’t interested in building a social
networking site, he wanted to build a great platform.
• The speed of its ascent has been unprecedented. It lacked the early
learning curves.
• Platform was building on: attracting advertisers, authenticity of
users, provide online games, virtual currency, like button, fan page
and f-commerce, news feed, tags, etc.
• Censorship and privacy issues are rising.
16. • Facebook starts facing more problems
today, it was try discover new business
opportunities, every one were watching
on it in the past 3 years.
However……
19. • From search to ubiquity
• Founders realized that they need to build plat
form by offering complementary products and
services.
• Google made money by AdWords and
AdSense
20. Google has problems:
• Privacy issues: the ads on the top
of message are too relevant.
Google needs to do more
permission marketing.
• Lack of diversification: 67% of its
revenue came from ads on Google
websites; 30% came from Google’s
ad network. (2010)only 3%
came from non-ad sources.
• Balance t/w expansion and focus.
• Google also tried hardware field,
such as Chrome book, Google
glass, also try to crush Apple via
Android, cooperate with
Samsung…
Icons of Google products
22. • online portfolio site
creative hub
• bring creative cloud to
community features
23. Yes, I recommend it!
Even this book does not cover every
aspect of the gong of four, it still
worth to read.
- You can know the trends of
business development in this era.
- You can distinguish platform from
monopolize.
- You can know more about B2B
business instead of only B2C when
create a platform for business.
24. Further Reading
• The third screen: Marketing to your customers in a
world gone mobile.
25.
26. Reference Page
• Silicon Valley Mega Deal: Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 Billion
• http://thetechpanda.com/2014/02/20/silicon-valley-mega-deal-facebook-buys-whatsapp-19-billion-rs-
114000-crore/#.VRPBmxDF-nQ
• Adobe Acquired Portfolio Service Behance For More Than $150 Million In Cash And Stock
• http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201212/122012AdobeAcquiresBehance.ht
ml
• http://www.philsimon.com/
• What is driving Google new highs?
• http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/03/13/whats-driving-google-to-new-highs.aspx
• Stop comparing WeChat to Whatspp
• http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/01/24/messaging-stop-comparing-wechat-whatsapp/
Editor's Notes
“But I am always consider it to be primarily a management book, not a technology one.”
About Phil Simon,
He is a frequent keynote speaker and recognized technology authority.
Most of his topic is about big data, platforms, management, communication, trends and technology.
The age of the platform won 2011 Axiom best business technology book award .
The book has been introduced to Korea.
He studied economics and political science at Carnegie Mellon University, and labor relations at Cornell University.
He must have a interest in technology, this might be the reason he chose CMU, or maybe CMU influences the way he look at the world.
Web 1.0
All of us has experenced that period.
First stage of the World Wide linking web pages and hyperlink
At very beginning, web tech only allows people to read from the internet.
By the late 1990s, e-commerce had been ironed out.
It focused on companies home pages.
Web 2.0
It is a platform that gives users the possibility (liberty) to control their data.
This is about user-generated content and the read-write web.
People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flicker, YouTube, Digg, etc.
Web 3.0 (p 239)
Web of data. Aka Sematic Web.
Web 3.0, with its use of semantics and artificial intelligence is meant to be a “smarter web”:
that knows what content you want to see and how you want to see it so that it saves you time and improves your life
This is what google is doing right now, search results are varied on different google accounts.
changing the web into a language that can be read and categorized by the system rather then humans.
Artificial Intelligence
Extracting meaning from the way people interact with the web.
Mobility
everything, everywhere, all the time
Platfrom is based on Web 2.0 era
The thesis of the book: platform as a new business model
It is simply a set of integrated planks.
Embrace third-party collaboration foster beneficial relationship with users, customers, partners, vendors, developers, and the community at a large.
At their core, platforms today are primarily about consumer utility and communications. Finally, because consumer tastes change much faster than business’ tastes, platforms today must adapt very quickly—or face obsolescence.
The thesis of the book: platform as a new business model, but it’s not business.
Plat support and extend business.
Compare to my knowledge:
It is a good method for business but it must be very difficult when a platform first start.(net work effects)
It is about consumer data.
It makes money based on individual’s data (e.g. demographic information)
People ask or exchange information by using platform, but we rarely think that our personal data has been collected on those platforms.
It can be good of bad.
Author covered his top in a balanced fashion,
Platforms cannot do everything for a business.
Cannot guarantee successful execution or the proper execution of the key strategies.
Cannot save dying businesses and technologies.
Platform might be to large for controlling. It abuse, scams, and misconduct.
(click fraud, illegal advertising, even harm to government scrutiny)
Example (not on the book):
Edward Joseph Snowden
leaked documents revealed numerous global surveillanceprograms, many of them run by the NSA and the Five Eyes with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments.
vertical integration is an arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or (market-specific) service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need.
horizontal integration is a strategy where a company creates or acquires production units for outputs which are alike - either complementary or competitive. One example would be when a company acquires competitors in the same industry doing the same stage of production for the creation of a monopoly.
Permission Marketing: opt in/ opt out
First mover advantage: it’s better to experiment and fail than to wait until all risk has been eliminated.
Apple is offering uses not just cool gadgets but also the software that glues together their digital lives
high standard : as a general rule, in the age of platform, companies are better off erring on the side of openness, not restriction and bureaucracy. Apple courted outside partners and suppliers strict rules for how apps look and behave in its devices.
How to make its second or third device more useful.
Examples (not on the book)
Facebook is discovering:
Last Year
Feb 2014
Silicon Valley Mega Deal: Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 Billion
Last Week
March 2015
Facebook officially announced the launch of its Messenger Platform during its F8 developer conference. At its core, the new service enables developers to add Messenger features to other apps.
this step makes FB more look like Wechat
“It’s a new platform that developers can use to build apps that help people connect,” Zuckerberg
Social Media’s decline in China:
Renren vs WeChat
Social Media’s decline in China:
Renren vs WeChat
Facebook officially announced the launch of its Messenger Platform during its F8 developer conference. At its core, the new service enables developers to add Messenger features to other apps.
this step makes FB more look like Wechat
“It’s a new platform that developers can use to build apps that help people connect,” Zuckerberg
WeChat is a online chat mobile application. Also contains picture sharing function, called “moments”.
It functions = Facebook + Whatsapp. However, it’s very focused. No overvelming message. Also, coperations can do promotions on wechat only after you follow the brand. (Permission marketing)
AdWords: Google's primary auction-based advertising program, used to deliver relevant ads to search queries or web content. These text-based ads appear beside related search results or web content on Google's own sites (Google.com) or on the thousands of Google's partner websites (Google network).
Theypay google
AdSense: Enables Google's network partners to deliver relevant ads from AdWords advertisers on their websites.
Google pay them
This year, it seems like Adsense is declining and Google’s search market share is currently at its lowest point in seven years.
Like Microsoft had done with Windows and Office, Google understandably still tightly holds onto the duo as its primary revenue pillars but the future implies only further slow decline with no obvious escape route.
Furthermore Google appears to be making another old Microsoft error: deprioritizing mobile.
Microsoft had domination of the computer space, so Google looks to be resting on its laurels in mobile with Android.
Google’s current attention pparently are moonshot projects: self driving cars, Internet delivering hot air balloons, revolutionary contact lenses, virtual reality cardboard headsets and glasses,modular smartphones ….however they have no current market situation.
In fact while Google is so focused on the next big thing, Apple is picking its pocket in the same way Steve Jobs loved to do to Microsoft. Bigger smartphones, mobile payments, biometric security, streaming music services and cross platform sync are all ideas Google did first, but Apple has been first to do properly.
This example is in the book but I think it has different point of view.
Adobe Acquired Portfolio Service Behance For More Than $150 Million In Cash And Stock in 2012
Behance: a creative hub ( Behance accelerates Adobe’s strategy to bring great community features to Creative Cloud, making it the ultimate hub for creatives worldwide.)
An book about how mobility and mobile platforms are fundamentally altering the dynamics of traditional or even web-based marketing.
I recommend this book as further reading because the platform book does not include much content about mobile market.
People spend more time on Mobile, even you are a platform and your’re doing good, you still need to pay attention to mobile market.
