Building Platforms

On its surface, the iPhone didn’t have totally new killer apps when it launched. It had a mail client, a music player, a web browser, YouTube, etc. The multitouch paradigm didn’t substantively transform what you could do with those apps; it was important because it made those apps possible on the tiny display. The first iPhone was important not... See more

The economics of a platform holder building games for its own hardware are just different, and the end result is that Sony is one of a very small number of companies that can afford to spend these kinds of budgets on development while still sticking to a relatively old-fashioned pay-to-play business model. Neither game features any kind of battle... See more

Sony earns a cut of the sales of third-party games on PlayStation, which of course it gets to keep with first-party games – meaning that its own games can justify very large budgets more easily, as they generate more revenue per unit sold. A further justification for taking this kind of risk on high development costs is that the games themselves... See more

For a person such as Hannah, it's far more valuable to get a few thousand people to pay her $4.99 directly than to have a shared model where she merely gets a few cents per thousand views.

It's far more valuable to 'get picked', but it's also much, much harder.

But this is the reality of the 'young creators' today. They are not talking about a... See more

On YouTube, for instance, only the biggest YouTubers are really able to make a living off the shared revenue they get from YouTube advertising. Most other YouTubers, all the ones in the middle, are forced to find other forms of income to make up the difference.

This is why we see YouTubers encourage their followers to 'support us on Patreon'. They... See more

Platforms only work for creators when you can limit the number of creators on it . The platforms don't care, of course, because they make money of the total revenue, so Facebook wants as many things as possible. But for individual creators, it's not a very good idea.

When the level of abundance gets too high, the solution, as hard as it may sound,... See more