what is the platform?

During the  ITU expo in Geneva, had a chance to ask Bob Kahn if a new  platform competitor to google, apple and facebook can be designed.  He said that the issue of inter-operability for application and data may indeed require development of new platforms, but that may disturb the existing revenue streams, therefore the existing major companies mentioned are not very interested.  He believes that his Digital Object Architecture project could become a new platform. Several years ago, I had an opportunity to discuss my platform vision with Dr. Kahn during some other ITU event. His comments were very accurate and helped me a lot. Back then, he mentioned privacy as a major concern. 

Facebook announcement of Places service is an important event in the Platform race. Facebook could have partnered with Foursquare or some other geospatial player(s) . Instead, Facebook is going for leverage strategy, aiming to build and control its own "wide platform". Possible strategic response for Foursquare,  threatened by Facebook ambitions and lock of the "wider platform", is to integrate with a new,  "open" social platform such as Diaspora.  It would be a mistake for Foursquare to try to build its own social platform, unless they make it "open" and convince other major players like Zynga to integrate with it.

In this post, I will communicate my vision of the User Platform . The Platform is a future Internet user-centered semantic web service, around which the ecosystem of information space services is built. The information space is comprised of web, media, real life, augmented reality, and all other media in which humans, nature, and machines interact. The Platform has five integrated components – User Platform, Groups Platform, Things Platform, Services Platform, and Content Platform.   Picture 1. User Platform   I will call the core service of the User Platform, servicing a specific user, a Platform Cell . It is indicated as the blue circle in the diagram. The Platform Cell is a human’s second brain in the information space that always works and never sleeps. The Platform makes sense of what is happening with the user and around the user, in real time. The User Platform creates user-related knowledge and uses that knowledge to communicate with the ecosystem of informati...

As the industry moves towards the Platform, the battle for control of private data between users, governments and vendors intensifies.  Emirati officials have declared BlackBerry smartphones a potential threat to national security because users' data is stored overseas, where local laws don't apply and where analysts say it could be harder for authorities to monitor. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/UAE-says-BlackBerry-is-apf-959472235.html?x=0

HP in the Platform race? They want to be Apple. They want be the makers of high-quality consumer gadgets all connected by way of a digital ecosystem. An ecosystem they own and operate. One tied together by webOS. http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/22/hp-apple-webos/

The Platform is a core service of the future Internet that links individuals, groups, things, content, and services to enable semantically connected global cloud computing ecosystem.

David Siegel is starting up his own Platform company!  http://thepowerofpull.com/pull/blog