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Always Own Your Platform

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform

#11

Post by jimktrains2 »

xwdv wrote: post #7

No point in owning your own platform unless you are in the business of building and running a platform. The real advice is to always be ready to abandon your platform at any moment and move on to a new one should its policies no longer be in your favor. Always be preparing for this scenario. What’s your contingency plan?

> The real advice is to always be ready to abandon your platform at any moment and move on to a new one should its policies no longer be in your favor. Always be preparing for this scenario.

Especially if you've built a business around a SaaS this is fairly impossible/difficult to do unless you don't embrace the features that set the SaaS apart, in which case, why bother with the SaaS at all.

I'm always an advocate for in-house control of any system that can't be abandoned in a week.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#12

Post by gatherhunterer »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

This is important but it doesn't address the reasons why people don't own their own platform. Audience. Successful platforms have solved the empty room problem. Until there is a decentralized solution to that, there is nothing new to talk about.

If I post an article on Medium, will the platform drive traffic to it on its own? Is my job done at that point, or will I still need to generate interest by posting it around and getting a lot of visits before Medium suggests it?

When new readers enjoy the content will they come back to me or will they come back to Medium?

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#13

Post by coding123 »

xwdv wrote: post #7

No point in owning your own platform unless you are in the business of building and running a platform. The real advice is to always be ready to abandon your platform at any moment and move on to a new one should its policies no longer be in your favor. Always be preparing for this scenario. What’s your contingency plan?

Why give the platform all that seo. In the long past era we used to have a bunch of random webshops. Now sellers can barely survive unless they are on Etsy eBay or Amazon. We gave them all that free SEO and now we are wishing we didn't.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#14

Post by ElFitz »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

This is important but it doesn't address the reasons why people don't own their own platform. Audience. Successful platforms have solved the empty room problem. Until there is a decentralized solution to that, there is nothing new to talk about.

Isn't this what platforms like hackernews or google do?

Solving the empty room problem while still letting you own your own platform.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#15

Post by [deleted] »

coding123 wrote: post #13
xwdv wrote: post #7

No point in owning your own platform unless you are in the business of building and running a platform. The real advice is to always be ready to abandon your platform at any moment and move on to a new one should its policies no longer be in your favor. Always be preparing for this scenario. What’s your contingency plan?

Why give the platform all that seo. In the long past era we used to have a bunch of random webshops. Now sellers can barely survive unless they are on Etsy eBay or Amazon. We gave them all that free SEO and now we are wishing we didn't.

[deleted]

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#16

Post by dsr_ »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #3

Generic 'oh guys let's make world better' stuff, without explaining how it could be really done irl. I mean, popular vlogger owning his own platform, really? Eating hosting costs, solving discoverability problem, etc?

Solve the underlying problem, which is:

What do I do now so that when the platform doesn't work, I still can?

Now the answer is obvious: you don't need to stop using platforms, you need to stop being dependent on any given platform.

Store all your videos in two different storage providers, plus your house archive. Have accounts on at least two different video distribution systems. Get people interested in seeing your own website regularly, so they don't just subscribe on one platform and ignore you otherwise. Get them engaged in several communities. Occasionally put special bits on just one of those video distributors, and then add them to the other(s) later. Get people used to following you.

This is, obviously, more work than just shoving everything to a Youtube channel, or just posting to Medium, or just hosting with Wordpress -- but the point is that when one of them folds, has a service disruption, declines your credit card, or is invaded by leet script kidz, your business survives and merely suffers from hiccups while you re-point things.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#17

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

ElFitz wrote: post #14
throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

This is important but it doesn't address the reasons why people don't own their own platform. Audience. Successful platforms have solved the empty room problem. Until there is a decentralized solution to that, there is nothing new to talk about.

Isn't this what platforms like hackernews or google do? Solving the empty room problem while still letting you own your own platform.

They solve it poorly. That's why HN allows up to three resubmissions for interesting material that fails to make the front page.

A lot of well-deserving stuff still doesn't get lucky, and never makes the front page.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#18

Post by jaabe »

gatherhunterer wrote: post #12
throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

This is important but it doesn't address the reasons why people don't own their own platform. Audience. Successful platforms have solved the empty room problem. Until there is a decentralized solution to that, there is nothing new to talk about.

If I post an article on Medium, will the platform drive traffic to it on its own? Is my job done at that point, or will I still need to generate interest by posting it around and getting a lot of visits before Medium suggests it? When new readers enjoy the content will they come back to me or will they come back to Medium?

Do you have a medium account? Because I don’t, and I don’t think anyone in my network does either.

I can see why you would use YouTube, videos aren’t easy to self host, but I’m really not sure why anyone would chose medium above self-hosting or even using github pages.

But maybe I’m just special, and maybe everyone else has a medium account?

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#20

Post by atian » 

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Always Own Your Platform
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