Platforms versus Services
Hunter Walk:
The platforms we think about today (e.g. Twitter, FB, Android/iOS) all started out as services which attracted end user interest.
You can talk about websites calling themselves platforms prematurely, that’s fine. However, operating systems are “platforms” almost by definition - Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Blackberry OS are all platforms on which devices are created, not “services”. The platform will die if there is no user interest (everyone wave to Blackberry!), but it is a platform none the less.
Personally, if I want to talk about a “platform” versus a “service”, I would have to make a clear distinction:
- A platform is the ecosystem that fuels services that exist beyond the need to sustain the platform.
- A service requires a platform to run.
You can build an application for Facebook, iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Windows, OS X, or Linux. You can’t build an application for Twitter that do much more than push updates to the server, so that’s a service. Tumblr is a service. WordPress is both.
It doesn’t make one more important than the other - in the end, it’s really just a useless distinction that more people shouldn’t give a damn about. Or, “Just another day on the internet.”
Source: techmeme.com
