This week’s High Five theme is, “What’s a Developer to Do?”
#5: Grou.ps And Grouply Welcome Ning Refugees
The free social networking site Ning announced this week that it will not be free for much longer. After arguably accepting too much VC investment, it ostensibly finds itself under pressure to recognize more growth than their current freemium model will allow. They will be requiring existing networks to upgrade to one of their paid services over the next couple of months, during which Grou.ps and Grouply are more than happy to fill the void.
Link: TechCrunch
#4: Holy Cow Did Twitter’s Top Investor Drop A Bombshell On Twitter App-Makers Today
In a move characterized by many as eating its young, Twitter investor and Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson fired a warning shot across the bow of thousands of developers. A major factor in Twitter’s success has been the ecosystem of clients applications that sprung up like merchants in a gold rush town. Now, the mine has struck gold and the owner is hinting that it will open its own general store, bank, and stagecoach service, possibly shuttering some of the very businesses that made their success possible.
Link: Business Insider
#3: Adobe: “Go Screw Yourself, Apple”
As may people are now aware, a clash of the titans is playing out between the tech giants Adboe and Apple. The long standing feud broke out into a war when the iPad was launched without support for Adobe’s Flash technology. The war intensified when, according to Adobe platform evangelist Lee Brimelow, Apple demonstrated its “tyrannical control over developers…more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe.” Apple’s strategies in this war are a case study in leveraging the application platform to lock down market share. Indeed, it is forcing software developers to choose sides.
Link: TechCrunch
#2: Apple Adobe War: How Adobe Screwed Itself
From “Screw You, Apple” to “Adobe Screwed Itself,” the debate on both sides is raging with respect to Apple versus Adobe. This article makes the argument that Adobe has its chance to create a true partnership back in the days when Apple needed a friend or two. Now that Apple is on top, argues the author, Adobe should not be surprised at Apple’s Karmic response.
Link: Web Guild
#1: A Marketer’s Guide to HTML5
Given all of this tumult between Apple and Adobe, how do the rest of us avoid not getting dragged into a land war in Asia? Unfortunately for Adobe, the low risk position is to embrace HTML5. As this article points out, there are other benefits to this platform besides making your site compatible with the Apple platform.
Link: Hubspot
Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…