Comments on: Identity Crisis http://www.stuffonfire.com/2007/07/09/identity-crisis/ don't you worry about blank, let me worry about blank Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:56:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1-alpha2 by: Web Apps are Killing Desktop Ones : David Paul Robinson http://www.stuffonfire.com/2007/07/09/identity-crisis/#comment-13263 Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:12:45 +0000 http://www.stuffonfire.com/2007/07/09/identity-crisis/#comment-13263 [...] stuffonfire: “If you ask some platform-neutral entrepreneur where to put their money and the next few years of their life, can you honestly expect anyone with a sound mind to suggest that it should go into anything but a web product?” [...] […] stuffonfire: “If you ask some platform-neutral entrepreneur where to put their money and the next few years of their life, can you honestly expect anyone with a sound mind to suggest that it should go into anything but a web product?” […]

]]> by: Phil Aaronson http://www.stuffonfire.com/2007/07/09/identity-crisis/#comment-13187 Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:14:38 +0000 http://www.stuffonfire.com/2007/07/09/identity-crisis/#comment-13187 Oh come on, the world isn't this black and white. A bubble swelling valuation does not mean the world has changed any more than laughing off javascript means that it hasn't. But you do sidestep some of Wil's arguments against the "new" web and the business behind it with the silly YouTube example. I think we only need look at your example of Facebook, and some of the popular applications that were built by small indie developers. They were already left with no alternative but to sell. There was no revenue stream, a ton of users and with all those users comes very real hosting costs. I could easily see the same thing happening with iPhone applications. In the end, is there a place for the indie developer who wants to be indie? When I saw the iPhone's YouTube application my first thought was how much Google payed to secure that? The Google and Yahoo! searches on Safari generate revenue for Apple. I wonder if/how much Apple makes for the Maps/Local search application on the iPhone. Maybe I'm being an over-the-top conspiracy theorist, but my thinking is that we'll see an SDK once it makes sense and *and* the cash-ectomy of various big web companies are complete. Oh come on, the world isn’t this black and white. A bubble swelling valuation does not mean the world has changed any more than laughing off javascript means that it hasn’t.

But you do sidestep some of Wil’s arguments against the “new” web and the business behind it with the silly YouTube example. I think we only need look at your example of Facebook, and some of the popular applications that were built by small indie developers. They were already left with no alternative but to sell. There was no revenue stream, a ton of users and with all those users comes very real hosting costs. I could easily see the same thing happening with iPhone applications. In the end, is there a place for the indie developer who wants to be indie?

When I saw the iPhone’s YouTube application my first thought was how much Google payed to secure that? The Google and Yahoo! searches on Safari generate revenue for Apple. I wonder if/how much Apple makes for the Maps/Local search application on the iPhone. Maybe I’m being an over-the-top conspiracy theorist, but my thinking is that we’ll see an SDK once it makes sense and *and* the cash-ectomy of various big web companies are complete.

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