Twitter Platform Archive

A platform is traditionally considered to be something on top of which you can build other applications. Last week Fred Wilson lamented that people really aren’t making new applications on top of Twitter. There’s been a bit of uproar over Fred’s post, and then Twitter’s aquisition of Tweetie including an article in today’s New York Times.

But being upset over Twitter’s desire to control more of the Twitter ecosystem misses the point a bit. The reason that, after several years and tens of millions of registered users that people are not building new app categories on top of twitter is that Twitter is not really a platform.

Let me explain.

Fred correctly pointed out most of the apps that people are making are not new apps. What you do with the current generation of twitter apps is essentially what you could always do with Twitter which is to share bite size bits of content with others that are interested.

Continue reading “Twitter isn’t a platform. Yet.” »