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Steven Saus has written a blog post about why you should never rely on social media. In his latest post on the topic he points out that:
[...] If you don’t personally own your website and data, you don’t have a website or data. Quite simply, you cannot rely on someone else for you to have a website, platform, or social media presence.
[...] I now know, in my gut, how fragile my access to the services Google, Facebook, and Twitter supply are.
Because – and I cannot stress this enough – my ban from G+ was due to something I supposedly posted to G+ when I was unable to post to G+. Hell, I still don’t know what got me in trouble in the first place.
Regardless, my trust is broken, and my role as product has been made painfully clear.
G+ is used as the example, but the same principles apply to the other social control media.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:32PM (5 children)
I agree with your points. But just to add a dimension for consideration: sometimes even when you know the owner of a marketplace can bury you at a whim, you have no choice but to play. I don't know what the situation is today, but a few years ago mobile app developers had no choice but to suffer through Apple's capricious app approval process: iPhone users were spending dramatically more money than other mobile operating system users. At the time, making money on Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc... was all but impossible, so Apple was the only game in town. Likewise, if I want to make money off of social applications my choices are to play ball with Facebook and Twitter and risk having them shut me down in an instant or make zip in obscurity. If you want to make money advertising on videos Youtube is effectively a monopoly (unless you're doing gaming videos, in which case maybe Twitch is an option) and you're going to have a hell of a time making money anywhere else. If you want to sell a legal product on the web, the best option for reaching customers has shifted from Ebay to Amazon third party sellers. There's a lot of fraud and nonsense in that market too, and Amazon can shut you down or change your business relationship to wreck you at their whim.
The flippant response is: "Don't try to make money with mobile applications, social applications, video advertising, or sales through the internet." But you're cutting out a huge set of potential business models and customers. Maybe the flippant answer is the correct answer too, but I'm not sure.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FakeBeldin on Monday April 30 2018, @07:57AM
That is actually a very interesting point.
Just to clarify my position: I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make money off of Youtube, an app store, or whatever. I will say that if you do so, you should be aware of how precarious your position is. It seems not everyone does.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday April 30 2018, @03:34PM (3 children)
> The flippant response is:
Another response is - do a risk assessment. Be ready to mitigate business risks (e.g. develop for Android as well as iPhone if that is your thing). Same as you wouldn't put all your business data on a single HDD, but rather make sure you have one or more backups.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday April 30 2018, @05:46PM
Again, I was addressing development of mobile apps five years ago. Today it makes sense to target Apple and Android. Back then it didn't.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 30 2018, @09:44PM (1 child)
How about you develop HTML5, so that it's not tied to any proprietory platform? It's tunnel vision like yours and your parent poster's that stopped open architectures like Tizen from taking a foothold, despite the fact that it was the solution to the very problem you're concerned about. If one slave master is bad, then perhaps two would be better? Erm, no...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:13PM
> How about you develop HTML5
That's a good idea as well.