On the Edge vs Fully Loaded
Fred has a great post on the rise of The Formerly HTML Code known as Widgets, who now having a different name from every GEMAYA permutation.
I worry with these widget edge plays that lack centralisation and control of content and community, do not in themselves make large businesses - Unless they have the economics of how to reward the distribution owner of the customer better than Google does.
I'm not sure who made the MySpace Music Player (I assume internally), but I dont think the Music Player by itself was/is a business, ditto YouTube's Video Embed in page functionality : Sure they were catalysts for audience growth, but without their .com destinations I see nothing like the 100m videos daily or 125m members story these companies have. Nor the valuations.
It's late here and I have no good analogies but I was going to say McDonalds and BMW will own some of their retail outlets and franchise a heck alot of them, but the edge to me, is something that lacks its own retail infrastructure, instead hoping it can sub-lease off the tenant and hope the landlord doesnt get wise to the deal.
While some distribution owners will let their audiences be pimped out to the edge (thats called adsense isnt it) esp for those large market cap players involved oligopolically ("You own video and music; We own search and ads").. some of these little post-it notes plays are going to be thrown into the digital trash. (unless the universal "add it" functionality fred wants which rox is implemented through some post-RSS/blog platform and/or browser standards)
I hope I'm wrong, but I dont see pureplay edge companies overthrowing centralised-edge hybrids. Today Australia's #1 telco bought China's leading real estate site for $500m. PurePlay-Edgeio for example is still (like most of us) years from that... There is going to be as we've seen with myspace, alot of chess games between the gadgets and the platform owners. The customer will probably lose out (lots of mess will probably stay on Freds sidebar until one day he gets a new one, like with his twice a decade laptop upgrade cycle) but its not like the customer knew any better anyway.
I worry with these widget edge plays that lack centralisation and control of content and community, do not in themselves make large businesses - Unless they have the economics of how to reward the distribution owner of the customer better than Google does.
I'm not sure who made the MySpace Music Player (I assume internally), but I dont think the Music Player by itself was/is a business, ditto YouTube's Video Embed in page functionality : Sure they were catalysts for audience growth, but without their .com destinations I see nothing like the 100m videos daily or 125m members story these companies have. Nor the valuations.
It's late here and I have no good analogies but I was going to say McDonalds and BMW will own some of their retail outlets and franchise a heck alot of them, but the edge to me, is something that lacks its own retail infrastructure, instead hoping it can sub-lease off the tenant and hope the landlord doesnt get wise to the deal.
While some distribution owners will let their audiences be pimped out to the edge (thats called adsense isnt it) esp for those large market cap players involved oligopolically ("You own video and music; We own search and ads").. some of these little post-it notes plays are going to be thrown into the digital trash. (unless the universal "add it" functionality fred wants which rox is implemented through some post-RSS/blog platform and/or browser standards)
I hope I'm wrong, but I dont see pureplay edge companies overthrowing centralised-edge hybrids. Today Australia's #1 telco bought China's leading real estate site for $500m. PurePlay-Edgeio for example is still (like most of us) years from that... There is going to be as we've seen with myspace, alot of chess games between the gadgets and the platform owners. The customer will probably lose out (lots of mess will probably stay on Freds sidebar until one day he gets a new one, like with his twice a decade laptop upgrade cycle) but its not like the customer knew any better anyway.
posted by redbarren at 10:03 PM
<< Home