Umair Haque compares Face Book's vs Apple Computer's Plat Form strategies. Yesterday, we saw platforms as mechanisms to strategically control complements. Strategists and economists studied platform wars intensely - with [Annabelle Gawer] and [Michael Cusumano]'s excellent [Platform Leadership] being perhaps the reference work for strategists. Today, I think there's perhaps a simpler and more powerful way to think strategically about platforms. Let me advance a simplifying proposition: Plat Form-s are MarKet-s.

Apple took something radically evil - the mobile industry - and is making it a little bit more good.

What would it take for Face Book to stop thinking platforms, and start thinking markets? Well, simply start charging people for apps, for a start: that would amplify incentives for crappy apps to go the way of the dinosaur. If advertisers are subsidizing apps for people, Facebook's market will always be distorted - because advertisers need consumers more than consumers need advertisers today.

Who else knows that platforms are really markets? GooGle, of course. (Hmm, because the run a WebAd MarKet? I guess so. I Commented to ask about GMail.) Who's blind to it, and still plays by yesterday's rules? Micro Soft, AOL, YaHoo. But that's just a start: the most interesting examples come from players outside tech industries altogether: Ford, [TheGap], and Bear Stearns, to name just a few players trapped by platform logic.

Aug26: Albert Wenger wrote about Umair's post. I Commented.

Aug27: semi-related - Apple Computer just banned a Comic Book reader app from its IPhone [App Store] because of its main/bundled title, [Murder Drome].

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