I just got back from the Geo-Local Smackdown with @Dylan Clendenin and @Alex Levinson.
Riffing on my thoughts from yesterday regarding the industry as an ecosphere and software as organisms this is how I see the situation. Tonight my friends and I saw 6 little fish swimming in a big pond. Sure they can boast adoption rates of 100,000 a week and userbases of a million or two. But these are shrimp and tuna. The silent Great White swimming in the distance is Facebook.
Not Apple or Google–each with a mobile platform but Facebook with it’s nearly half a billion users. Neither Apple or Google have a network that size with so many interlocking parts. Facebook’s social graph is the ecosphere that each of these 6 little fish tonight are hoping to create.
Make no mistake about it—Facebook is going to turn on geo-location. Trust me. And they will do it in a big platform kind of way. They will in effect become the geo-location reef around which all life grows as well as the bad ass shark that guards it all and feeds on the thriving life. (credit to @Robert Scoble for the idea of a software reef)
It’s clear that 2010 is the year that the mobile web really takes hold. Mobile phones are everywhere. I have 6 staring me in the face as I write this and I am considering buying the new iPhone. Think of each of the phones you see in people’s hands as little fish that swim on the reef. Now think of all these new geo-location companies as bigger fish that are fighting for a chance to eat the data your phone produces. And then picture Facebook at the top of the foodchain.
I see an interesting parallel between Facebook’s situation and Apple. Both are creating thriving reeves. Both are also ruthless preditors that are essentially growing their own ecosystems where they can pick and choose what survives and what dies.
The question in both situations is what does a smart developer do? Do you invest time and money trying to become the 7th or 8th little fish? Or do you become an exotic plant that grows on the reef?
FWIW & for better or worse—after tonight I hold true to my prediction that geo-location will be completely ubiquitous within 5 years—Get ready.
No tags
