http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/andreessen-on-p.html Comments & Reviews of http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/andreessen-on-p.html on StumbleUpon en-us Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:32:35 -0800 Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:22:48 -0800 http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/andreessen-on-p.html http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/logo_su_36x36.png Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:52:58 -0700 http://sheaman42.stumbleupon.com/review/12696511/ sheaman42 - More discussion of platforms. This post comes from Marc Andreessen, who is currently working on a platform for building and deploying social web apps called Ning. One of the apps that has been built in Ning is We Love Etsy, a social network for people who love Etsy. Very nice. Marc describes three kinds of internet-based platforms Level 1 - API access - Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, etc, etc Level 2 - API plug-in - Facebook Level 3 - Runtime environment - Ning, Salesforce.com, etc, etc Marc asserts that Level 3 platforms are the best for the developer. And I am not going to argue with Marc on technical grounds. That would be like me trying to beat my son at his Xbox. Marc's argument is that Level 3 platforms provide all of the infrastructure to build, deploy, and scale a web application and therefore are more attractive to developers. He says: What are some of those issues? To list a few: You have to provide a runtime environment that can execute arbitrary third-party application code. You have to build a system for accepting and managing that code. You have to build integrated development tools into your interface to let people develop that code. You have to provide an integrated database environment suitable for applications to store and process their data. You have to deal with security in many different ways to prevent applications from stepping on one another or on your system -- for example, sandboxing. You have to anticipate the consequences an application succeeding and needing to be automatically scaled. And you have to build an automated system underneath all that to provide the servers, storage, and networking capabilities required to actually run all of the third-party applications.]]> http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/andreessen-on-p.html