Click here to show or hide the menubar.

Home >  Archive >  2010 >  May >  20

Previous / Next

Ben Franklin would have understood the plight of Twitter clients
By Dave Winer on Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 7:44 AM.

A picture named bill.jpgThis is what Ben Franklin said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. permalink

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." permalink

It's an important idea, one that applies not only to revolutions and revolutionaries, but to independent software developers.  permalink

This week a lot of the Twitter client developers are announcing that they now support Google Buzz. Another corporate platform that's trying to overtake Twitter.  permalink

In the unlikely event that Google manages to pass Twitter, the chance that Google will bypass the client developers, as Twitter did, is 100 percent. That's how corporate platforms work. Right now Google needs the client developers to help them try to climb over a very high wall. Later the market will demand that they ship an official client, the same call that Twitter heard. permalink

The secret for the client guys is that instead of investing in individual platforms owned by huge corporations, they must swallow hard and invest in working with each other. None of them is going to eliminate the competition by doing a better job of sucking up to corporations that own the platforms. Their only chance of winning is if a platform emerges that isn't owned by a corporation.  permalink

In other words, a platform with no platform vendor. permalink

You know, like the Internet. <img src="> permalink

RSS feed for Scripting News
This site contributes to the scripting.com community river.


© Copyright 1997-2012 Dave Winer. Last update: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 at 2:14 AM Eastern. Last build: 8/26/2012; 5:45:14 PM. "It's even worse than it appears."

RSS feed for Scripting News

Previous / Next